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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.emusic-l
Date:         Mon, 21 Dec 1992 10:21:27 -0500
From:         "Joseph D. McMahon" <xrjdm@CALVIN.GSFC.NASA.GOV>
Subject:      Re: PHIL COMP
Comments: To: EMUSIC-L@american.edu
              Dec 18, 92 04:12:16 pm

JOEL STERN writes:
>
>           I'd  be interested in  hearing  about  other people's composition
>           philosophies and techniques, especially as these do or don't rest
>           on  different premises  in  the  electronic domain  than  in  the
>           acoustic  domain.
I'm not exactly sure I can say what my premises are. I can name influences
and talk about my general technique, but I don't have a codified "how I
proceed" set of rules.

>           For  myself,   with  sequencing  I   tend   to
>           micro-manage the  music  much  more  than  when writing  in  more
>           traditional veins.
Hmm. Well, my stuff tends to be pretty improvisational. I'll skittter around
through patches, just fiddling, until something hits as an idea. Once I have
a basic idea, I'll play with it until I find a direction to go in, then take
it and see where it ends up. I have a lot of fragments sitting around on
disk which I'm incubating right now to see what they develop into. As an
example, I finally finished a piece that took about sixteen years to develop
all of the ideas for.

>           My sequenced compositions tend  to  be  fairly
>           dense  and compact, probably  a by-product of spending  too  much
>           time doing and redoing limited sections of music. Timbres play an
>           important part in creating contrasts within and between sections,
>           but  I wonder if  other e-composers place  more emphasis on  this
>           aspect,  as  opposed  to development of  melodic themes, harmony,
>           counterpoint, etc.
I try to integrate the two by having the best sound I can find for a given
motif. Traditional ways of structuring music can be extremely valuable in
lending shape to compositions. I have background both in classical and jazz,
which are sort of cross-melded into whatever it is my style is. One of my
most recent pieces is actually in modified sonata-allegro form, only I
didn't realize it until after it was finished!

I've been studying music theory and reading a fairlt decent second-year book
on harmony and composition lately, and have been finding that there are
a lot of things that I've reinvented. It's been very valuable to see how
other composers have used similar materials (and to glom stuff that works
well, too).

>           I  think  that  e-music  shouldn't  ape
>           a-music,  as  in  trying  to exclusively reproduce  the  latter's
>           timbres and dynamics; which may be  the reason why there seems to
>           be  a consensus in  favor  of  analog synths  in  the messages on
>           emusic-l and synth-l.
Acoustic imitations are okay if that's what fits in the piece. I've a few
things that are pretty much imitations, and others that use no traditional
sounds at all. It depends on what the piece calls for. The *structures*,
however, are very useful.

>           Anyway, maybe  the virtue of
>           electronic  music   is   the  depth   and   ease  (deceptive)  of
>           manipulating  many  parameters  at  once (platitude?).  In  other
>           words, not just the sound itself, but where and  how much  of  it
>           there is,  its sparseness or complexity in time, etc.

I'll agree with this statement. There are many more things that can be done
with soundstage, motion, and range than are possible with "real instruments".
There are also things that can be done that can't be done in any other way.
Dodge's "Speech Songs", transformations of mathematical patterns or sensor
data into musical material, outre controllers (like brainwave sensors or
GSR), and speeds (fast *and* slow) impossible for players of physical
instruments to master. I haven't even mentioned alternate tunings....

 --- Joe M.