From: fields@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew Fields)
Subject: GEMS 0
Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept., Ann Arbor, MI
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 21:12:05 GMT

PROLOGUE

Computer networking is one of the amazing feats of engineering of the
late 20th century.  Vast, all-encompassing networks now make it possible
for data to be shared among people world-wide.  Three basic services
are now commonly available:

1) Electronic mail: person-to-person text communication.  A message I type
here in Michigan can be read on a computer screen in New Zealand in minutes.

2) FTP (File Transfer Protocol): general data-sharing.  Libraries of
programs and other data have been created in various parts of the world
in such a way that any user can browse or copy these programs to their
own computers at high speeds.

3) Network News.  Of the tens of thousands of computers networked worldwide,
some thousands of them form the backbone of a system for mass-distribution of
information in a newsletter format.  Any user can read this news, and many
users can post a news article to the closest participating computer, which
in turn mails copies of the article to other computers.  Vast amounts of
information is shared this way, and eventually, some of it has to be
retired or deleted.

To make network news more manageable, it is grouped heirarchically into
/Newsgroups/.  New newsgroups are created when enough people agitate
for the existence of them.  Currently, most sites carry over a thousand
newsgroups.

In the summer of 1992, the newsgroup <rec.music.compose> was proposed
by Joshua Barinstein, as a forum for the discussion of all kinds of
musical composition.  The discussion regarding its creation centered
on the issues: were the communication needs of composers being served
by newsgroups devoted to musical performance or synthesizers, and
could these needs be met by these groups without the overhead of a new
newsgroup.  Several people argued convincingly that mixing apples with
oranges would force many participating computers to perform the
redundant job of sorting composition articles from the others, and so
the overhead of using existing newsgroups would be substantial.  But
the more obvious concern was that composers would not use newsgroups
not devoted to composition.  I participated in that discussion as an
advocate of the group.

In July 1992, a vote was taken, in which the idea received
overwhelming support, and in August 1992, <rec.music.compose> came
into being.  After a rocky start in which the participants worked
to distinguish the group from existing groups, some heavy discussion
of the complex relationship between compositional craft and intuition
emerged.  In that climate, I posted a short message offering to write
a series of educational articles regarding bits of compositional
wisdom that had been passed on to me over the years, with the
following proposed contents:

 1) Drama and Climax
 2) About Parallel Fifths
 3) Shortcuts for Theory Homework
 4) Strategies for Canon and Fugue
 5) About Serial Materials

In the discussion that followed, the phrase "gems of wisdom" became a
sort of /leitmotif/, so the idea hatched in my mind to use the word
GEMS as the title of the article series, as a way of saying "these are
the articles that I promised." A variety of people wrote news articles
or sent me electronic mail strongly encouraging me to write and post
the series.

The readership of the group ranged from musically-illiterate novices
to top-notch musical scholars, making every kind of music under the
sun, from pop songs to serial music to musical happenings and so
forth.  For me, this posed some challenges, because, while my articles
had to be clear and readable to a variety of novices, the slightest
misrepresentation or oversimplification could lead to a flurry of
corrective and explanatory articles, at great expense to the computer
network.  On top of this, I wanted to make sure that my articles would
be of interest specifically to composers, but at the same time, be
appealing to a wide variety of composers.  My prose style had to be at
once rather precise and quite informal, in keeping with the informal
nature of computer network news.

In writing these articles, I am indebted to the many teachers who have
prodded me towards quality work, especially Richard Hoffmann of
Oberlin College, Ross Bauer, Alfred Lerdahl, and Leslie Bassett of the
University of Michigan.

Newsgroups: rec.music.compose