CMJ Editor's Notes

Adrian Freed Berkeley, California, USA adrian@CNMATBerkeleyedu The following set of items was used to "loosen up" the thinking of students during two classes I taught at the University of California Santa Cruz extension on "New Media and Audio Technologies." The idea was to move the focus away from technological details and toward future applications enabled by the technologies. Each student picked a topic and made a presentation near the end of class, after I had covered much of the technological material. Many students loved it and made very interesting creative presentations. A few hated the idea sufficiently to drop the class entirely after hearing about the projects! Next time I will probably teach two separate classes with a division you might see in an English department--literature and creative writing--i.e., (1) digital audio and music "techno-poop" 101, and (2) future applications and implications of new audio and music technology. The overall question is, What is the driving force: technology or applications? Video Game for the Blind Assumption: The visual channel is central for successful entertainment applications of media technology. Design an interactive "video game" experience for blind people. Identify ways to initially capture players' attention {so they will put money into the slotl. Explain how your design holds their attention, avoids boredom, and encourages them to keep feeding coins into the machine. A Truly Lasting Electronic Musical Instrument Assumption: Electronic musical instruments will always have a short market life lof a few years) before new models eclipse the old. This century's mastery of metal, plastic, sand Isilicon chips), and computational abstraction {software and simulation) has been applied to create many wonderful new musical instruments. Like many other products of our time, customers have developed an appetite for novelty in the form of new sounds and packaging. Ironically this need for novelty makes it unlikely that an electronic musical instrument will have the lasting power |often many centuries| of successful traditional instruments. For a community of composers and performers to rally around an instrument, they must know that it will be around for more than just a few years. Design what will become the first lasting digital musical instrument. Decide whether it will have a user interface similar to a piano, a guitar, a monophonic instrument such as the saxophone, or something completely new. What will the instrument sound like? How will it be controlled? Why will the design last hundreds of years? What distinguishes it from conventional instruments? A Disposable Audio Recorder Assumption: Customers need to own their own equipment and medium to record and store sound and visual materials. One result of mass-production technology is functionality from products that cost practically nothing to manufacture. One example of this is the~disposable or "single use" still camera. Interestingly, disposable cameras are neither thrown away nor are they used only once. Their parts are reused. Design a portable, disposable, audio recorder. What would people use one for? Identify the key technologies needed to make this work. Must the audio be stored within the device? Do current technologies simply need to be cheap enough, or are new technologies needed? How many years will it be before this is possible? Will a disposable camcorder be possible? 3-D Direct Manipulation Sound Post-Production Assumption: People will always be satisfied with cartoon-like, twodimensional superposition of sound tracks. Sounds combine in rich ways in three-dimensional space. What are the technological difficulties that prevent us from combining sounds in the studio as they are combined in the real world? Design the user interface to a 3-D sound post-production facility Identify the primary elements to be manipulated, their 3-D graphical representations, and how users interact with them. Who would use such a facility? Media-Free Music and Video Stores Assumption: People need to visit stores to pick out music and video. Develop a business plan for a store that rents music (and/or video) material over networks, rather than requiring customers to visit and pick up physical media. Figure out how much customers are willing to pay for this (hint: pizza delivery). How many channels of playback must a single store provide to compete with a well-integrated chain of stores? Multimedia One-Man (Person!) Band Assumption: You need huge trucks and a road crew to entertain large audiences. Design a one-person multimedia road show. Your constraints are severe: you must be able to check the gear onto a plane. Sketch the content of the show and how the performer controls the lighting, visual, and audio material. What is the role of the audience? The show must go on--how do you make the system reliable enough? How does this system accommodate different venues? The Demise of Special-Purpose Hardware for Music Synthesizers Assumption: To achieve sufficient signal-processing performance, music synthesizers require custombuilt, special-purpose hardware. The performance available from new general-purpose processors such as the R4400, PowerPC, and Pentium makes it possible to implement interesting sound-synthesis algorithms as programs in a high-level language. Write a program in your favorite high-level language for additive sound synthesis: a bank of oscillators is required. Provide control over the amplitude and phase of the sinewave output of each oscillator. Write a version that is as clear and easy to understand as possible, then create the fastest version you can using a familiar processor. Auditory "Opera Glasses" for Ultimate Concert Sound Assumption: You must use sounds in air to communicate with the audience. If you have attended a large public gathering or music concert, you will have noticed several unfortunate results of the fact that in air, sound travels much more slowly than light. The main problem is that performers'gestures do not appear synchronized, just as thunder and lightning do not appear to occur simultaneously. Another effect is feedback, or howling. Explore the idea of handing out headphones to everyone in the audience, to provide sound. What features could these headphones provide, other than higher-quality correctly synchronized sounds? What features are needed to provide the best of home listening and the concert experience? Distance Music Education Assumption: Your music teacher needs to be in the same room with you. Prepare a piano lesson to be given by a famous pianist to enthusiastic students all over the world. Each student is at home using a special piano with a MIDI connection, such as the Yamaha Disklavier. Key presses from the student can be transmitted to the teacher. The teacher's gestures are broadcast to the students'pianos. How will the students learn fingerings? How can the teacher prepare exercises adapted to the individual needs of students? The Merging of Audio and Video Assumption: The market for films and video is different from that for records. Each requires its own products, artists, and stores. It used to be simple: videos were rented from video stores and CDs were bought from record stores. Now record store chains (such as Tower) rent moyies, and video stores rent music videos. Successful video clips on MTV help sell recorded music. Before, the physical media for film and video was different from those for audio. Today, compressed video and high-quality still images Iphoto CD) are stored on CDs. Digital audio is stored on tape for rotary video-head technology (DAT). Will the video, film, still photography, and audio markets remain distinct, or be swallowed into a single multimedia market? Will there always be a role for audio only and purely musical expression? What effect will multimedia technology have on future music? The Demise of Print, TV, and Radio Assumption: The major reason traditional print media, TV, and radio hold their own against the onslaught of interactive digital media is that they look and sound better. Identify what characterizes highquality audio (production value). Is there anything inherent in the technological infrastructure (such as broadcast or mass distribution) that gives traditional media an unbeatable advantage over interactive digital media? If you think they will always coexist, explain what influence they will have on each other. Otherwise, when do you think will be the doomsday for traditional media? The Demise of All Media Assumption: Now that we have reproducing media, they are here to stay The reproducing media (books, faxes, CDs, video) may represent a temporary enthusiasm in world history The problem they address is to amplify individual expression to an audience that is distant in space and time. Describe how large-scale telepresence technology can address this need more effectively than reproducing media. Hint: Calculate how many performers are needed to ensure that an individual can find a live performance of any Shakespearean play in any language at any time of day or night. Will there be an underprivileged class without access? What will be the most successful services offered by telepresence? [The editors believe it is a good exercise to propose, and then design, more of this kind of Gedankenexperiment, and encourage readers to contribute them to Computer Music Journal.--STP]

	Vol. 20 Issue 2 Editor's Notes	CMJ Library >
	Music and Audio Technology Projects to Stir Your Imagination
	Adrian Freed Berkeley, California, USA adrian@CNMATBerkeleyedu The following set of items was used to "loosen up" the thinking of students during two classes I taught at the University of California Santa Cruz extension on "New Media and Audio Technologies." The idea was to move the focus away from technological details and toward future applications enabled by the technologies. Each student picked a topic and made a presentation near the end of class, after I had covered much of the technological material. Many students loved it and made very interesting creative presentations. A few hated the idea sufficiently to drop the class entirely after hearing about the projects! Next time I will probably teach two separate classes with a division you might see in an English department--literature and creative writing--i.e., (1) digital audio and music "techno-poop" 101, and (2) future applications and implications of new audio and music technology. The overall question is, What is the driving force: technology or applications? Video Game for the Blind Assumption: The visual channel is central for successful entertainment applications of media technology. Design an interactive "video game" experience for blind people. Identify ways to initially capture players' attention {so they will put money into the slotl. Explain how your design holds their attention, avoids boredom, and encourages them to keep feeding coins into the machine. A Truly Lasting Electronic Musical Instrument Assumption: Electronic musical instruments will always have a short market life lof a few years) before new models eclipse the old. This century's mastery of metal, plastic, sand Isilicon chips), and computational abstraction {software and simulation) has been applied to create many wonderful new musical instruments. Like many other products of our time, customers have developed an appetite for novelty in the form of new sounds and packaging. Ironically this need for novelty makes it unlikely that an electronic musical instrument will have the lasting power \|often many centuries\| of successful traditional instruments. For a community of composers and performers to rally around an instrument, they must know that it will be around for more than just a few years. Design what will become the first lasting digital musical instrument. Decide whether it will have a user interface similar to a piano, a guitar, a monophonic instrument such as the saxophone, or something completely new. What will the instrument sound like? How will it be controlled? Why will the design last hundreds of years? What distinguishes it from conventional instruments? A Disposable Audio Recorder Assumption: Customers need to own their own equipment and medium to record and store sound and visual materials. One result of mass-production technology is functionality from products that cost practically nothing to manufacture. One example of this is the~disposable or "single use" still camera. Interestingly, disposable cameras are neither thrown away nor are they used only once. Their parts are reused. Design a portable, disposable, audio recorder. What would people use one for? Identify the key technologies needed to make this work. Must the audio be stored within the device? Do current technologies simply need to be cheap enough, or are new technologies needed? How many years will it be before this is possible? Will a disposable camcorder be possible? 3-D Direct Manipulation Sound Post-Production Assumption: People will always be satisfied with cartoon-like, twodimensional superposition of sound tracks. Sounds combine in rich ways in three-dimensional space. What are the technological difficulties that prevent us from combining sounds in the studio as they are combined in the real world? Design the user interface to a 3-D sound post-production facility Identify the primary elements to be manipulated, their 3-D graphical representations, and how users interact with them. Who would use such a facility? Media-Free Music and Video Stores Assumption: People need to visit stores to pick out music and video. Develop a business plan for a store that rents music (and/or video) material over networks, rather than requiring customers to visit and pick up physical media. Figure out how much customers are willing to pay for this (hint: pizza delivery). How many channels of playback must a single store provide to compete with a well-integrated chain of stores? Multimedia One-Man (Person!) Band Assumption: You need huge trucks and a road crew to entertain large audiences. Design a one-person multimedia road show. Your constraints are severe: you must be able to check the gear onto a plane. Sketch the content of the show and how the performer controls the lighting, visual, and audio material. What is the role of the audience? The show must go on--how do you make the system reliable enough? How does this system accommodate different venues? The Demise of Special-Purpose Hardware for Music Synthesizers Assumption: To achieve sufficient signal-processing performance, music synthesizers require custombuilt, special-purpose hardware. The performance available from new general-purpose processors such as the R4400, PowerPC, and Pentium makes it possible to implement interesting sound-synthesis algorithms as programs in a high-level language. Write a program in your favorite high-level language for additive sound synthesis: a bank of oscillators is required. Provide control over the amplitude and phase of the sinewave output of each oscillator. Write a version that is as clear and easy to understand as possible, then create the fastest version you can using a familiar processor. Auditory "Opera Glasses" for Ultimate Concert Sound Assumption: You must use sounds in air to communicate with the audience. If you have attended a large public gathering or music concert, you will have noticed several unfortunate results of the fact that in air, sound travels much more slowly than light. The main problem is that performers'gestures do not appear synchronized, just as thunder and lightning do not appear to occur simultaneously. Another effect is feedback, or howling. Explore the idea of handing out headphones to everyone in the audience, to provide sound. What features could these headphones provide, other than higher-quality correctly synchronized sounds? What features are needed to provide the best of home listening and the concert experience? Distance Music Education Assumption: Your music teacher needs to be in the same room with you. Prepare a piano lesson to be given by a famous pianist to enthusiastic students all over the world. Each student is at home using a special piano with a MIDI connection, such as the Yamaha Disklavier. Key presses from the student can be transmitted to the teacher. The teacher's gestures are broadcast to the students'pianos. How will the students learn fingerings? How can the teacher prepare exercises adapted to the individual needs of students? The Merging of Audio and Video Assumption: The market for films and video is different from that for records. Each requires its own products, artists, and stores. It used to be simple: videos were rented from video stores and CDs were bought from record stores. Now record store chains (such as Tower) rent moyies, and video stores rent music videos. Successful video clips on MTV help sell recorded music. Before, the physical media for film and video was different from those for audio. Today, compressed video and high-quality still images Iphoto CD) are stored on CDs. Digital audio is stored on tape for rotary video-head technology (DAT). Will the video, film, still photography, and audio markets remain distinct, or be swallowed into a single multimedia market? Will there always be a role for audio only and purely musical expression? What effect will multimedia technology have on future music? The Demise of Print, TV, and Radio Assumption: The major reason traditional print media, TV, and radio hold their own against the onslaught of interactive digital media is that they look and sound better. Identify what characterizes highquality audio (production value). Is there anything inherent in the technological infrastructure (such as broadcast or mass distribution) that gives traditional media an unbeatable advantage over interactive digital media? If you think they will always coexist, explain what influence they will have on each other. Otherwise, when do you think will be the doomsday for traditional media? The Demise of All Media Assumption: Now that we have reproducing media, they are here to stay The reproducing media (books, faxes, CDs, video) may represent a temporary enthusiasm in world history The problem they address is to amplify individual expression to an audience that is distant in space and time. Describe how large-scale telepresence technology can address this need more effectively than reproducing media. Hint: Calculate how many performers are needed to ensure that an individual can find a live performance of any Shakespearean play in any language at any time of day or night. Will there be an underprivileged class without access? What will be the most successful services offered by telepresence? [The editors believe it is a good exercise to propose, and then design, more of this kind of Gedankenexperiment, and encourage readers to contribute them to Computer Music Journal.--STP]