CMJ Editor's Notes

I would like to open this note with a few quotes that demonstrate the dilemmas I intend to address in this column. In his article this issue, Miller Puckette writes, "An essential part of `real' music is the live element, the indefinable but undeniable interaction between players and audience which makes music exciting." Miller also mentions "the very limited sense in which `tape music' can be considered music." In his letter in Computer Music Journal 15:3, Fred Malouf mentioned people saying their impression of his improvised music as "sounding written." The converse of this appears in Larry Austin's review (in Perspectives of New Music, Summer, 1985) of my composition bat out of Hell, wherein he wrote that it (an algorithmically-composed piece), "organically evolved like a good improviser."

My two issues (dilemmas) are whether both criteria aren't actually equally irrelevant? I would contend that the emotional honesty and passion of the resulting music (as heard by a listener with closed eyes), are the only factors by which we should judge musical expression-real-time or not, through-composed or not.

I have always viewed software-based non-real-time sound synthesis and processing techniques as an extension of the analog tape technology that was part of the tool kit of the musique concrete composer since the late 1940's. I was trained to think that there were several important practical advantages to the tape music technology that have important aesthetical ramifications. One of these is to free the composer from the notation of his or her music by making it unnecessary for the notation (to the extent that it even exists), to be meaningful to anyone except the composer. Another ramification (more important to me personally), is that tape music (and non-real-time computer music) allows composers to interpret their own pieces, thereby increasing the possible emotional/spiritual/intellectual concentration and passion within a piece. In light of the recent focus on (dare I say mania about?), real-time digital performance, I am forced to inquire what ever happened to the instruments that "freed us from real-time?"

I have often used the analogy of comparing the difference between "performance music" and "non-real-time" musics with that between the media of theater (i.e., live performance), film (live performance processed out-of-real-time) and animation (hand-drawn or computer-generated). Are films and cartoons not capable of passion? Should we define non-real-time music as a different medium, just like theater and file are differentiated? What role does real-time interaction and physical gesture play in the end result?

Many in our field have noticed the "poor cousin" treatment of non-real-time (tape music) "listening sessions" at contemporary music festivals and conferences. The 1990 International Music Conference in Glasgow was a welcome exception in that live and non- live pieces were mixed at both the mid-day and the evening concerts. This is unfortunately a rarity, as several of the event reviews in this issue of the Journal demonstrate.

To relate this dilemma to the larger issues that are being raised in the "Machine Songs" articles, what is the fitting (perhaps new) performance situation and composer/performer/listener sociology for non-real-time music? Are "traditional" concerts still relevant or appropriate for music where there is no live interaction? What is the sociology of a tape concert or of "loudspeaker music?" Why are we, as the practitioners of this new craft, not educating listeners to hear music absolutely, without consideration for its mode or temporality of production?

	Vol. 15 Issue 4 Editor's Notes	CMJ Library >
	The Second Dilemma, or: Tape Music, The Poor Cousin
	Stephen Travis Pope Computer Music Journal I would like to open this note with a few quotes that demonstrate the dilemmas I intend to address in this column. In his article this issue, Miller Puckette writes, "An essential part of `real' music is the live element, the indefinable but undeniable interaction between players and audience which makes music exciting." Miller also mentions "the very limited sense in which `tape music' can be considered music." In his letter in Computer Music Journal 15:3, Fred Malouf mentioned people saying their impression of his improvised music as "sounding written." The converse of this appears in Larry Austin's review (in Perspectives of New Music, Summer, 1985) of my composition bat out of Hell, wherein he wrote that it (an algorithmically-composed piece), "organically evolved like a good improviser." My two issues (dilemmas) are whether both criteria aren't actually equally irrelevant? I would contend that the emotional honesty and passion of the resulting music (as heard by a listener with closed eyes), are the only factors by which we should judge musical expression-real-time or not, through-composed or not. I have always viewed software-based non-real-time sound synthesis and processing techniques as an extension of the analog tape technology that was part of the tool kit of the musique concrete composer since the late 1940's. I was trained to think that there were several important practical advantages to the tape music technology that have important aesthetical ramifications. One of these is to free the composer from the notation of his or her music by making it unnecessary for the notation (to the extent that it even exists), to be meaningful to anyone except the composer. Another ramification (more important to me personally), is that tape music (and non-real-time computer music) allows composers to interpret their own pieces, thereby increasing the possible emotional/spiritual/intellectual concentration and passion within a piece. In light of the recent focus on (dare I say mania about?), real-time digital performance, I am forced to inquire what ever happened to the instruments that "freed us from real-time?" I have often used the analogy of comparing the difference between "performance music" and "non-real-time" musics with that between the media of theater (i.e., live performance), film (live performance processed out-of-real-time) and animation (hand-drawn or computer-generated). Are films and cartoons not capable of passion? Should we define non-real-time music as a different medium, just like theater and file are differentiated? What role does real-time interaction and physical gesture play in the end result? Many in our field have noticed the "poor cousin" treatment of non-real-time (tape music) "listening sessions" at contemporary music festivals and conferences. The 1990 International Music Conference in Glasgow was a welcome exception in that live and non- live pieces were mixed at both the mid-day and the evening concerts. This is unfortunately a rarity, as several of the event reviews in this issue of the Journal demonstrate. To relate this dilemma to the larger issues that are being raised in the "Machine Songs" articles, what is the fitting (perhaps new) performance situation and composer/performer/listener sociology for non-real-time music? Are "traditional" concerts still relevant or appropriate for music where there is no live interaction? What is the sociology of a tape concert or of "loudspeaker music?" Why are we, as the practitioners of this new craft, not educating listeners to hear music absolutely, without consideration for its mode or temporality of production?