Curtis Roads (ed.): Composers and the Computer (1985)
Filed under book | Tags: · composing, composition, computer music, computing, electroacoustic music, electronic music, music, music criticism, music history, sound, technology
An early anthology focusing on the aesthetics and compositional techniques in computer music.
With essays by Curtis Roads, Charles Dodge, Tod Machover, Jean-Claude Risset, Iannis Xenakis, and an interview with Herbert Brün by Peter Hamlin with Curtis Roads.
Publisher William Kaufmann, Los Altos, CA, 1985
Computer Music and Digital Audio series
ISBN 0865760853, 9780865760851
xx+201 pages
Review: Jon Appleton (The Musical Quarterly, 1986).
PDF (57 MB)
See also Roads’s Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic (2015).
Comment (0)From Xenakis’s UPIC to Graphic Notation Today (2020)
Filed under book | Tags: · composing, composition, computer music, graphic notation, music, music history, notation, software
“In the late 1970s, an interdisciplinary team led by the composer Iannis Xenakis developed the UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique CEMAMu) out of an effort to transform drawings into synthesized sound. The composers can draw waveforms and envelopes straight onto an electronic tablet interface and translate them into sound through the computer. The revolution in graphic composition triggered by Iannis Xenakis and carried forward by other established computer musicians such as Jean-Claude Risset or Curtis Roads continues forty years later in modern computer programs.”
“Together with the Centre Iannis Xenakis, the ZKM is now addressing the genesis of this unique computational instrument and traces its technical, social, institutional, and educational significance up to the current practice of contemporary composers.”
Contributors: Richard Barrett, Rodolphe Bourotte, Pierre Couprie, Cyrille Delhaye, Alain Després, Julio Estrada, Kiyoshi Furukawa, Rudolf Frisius, Hughes Genevois, Kosmas Giannoutakis, Dimitris Kamarotos, Henning Lohner, François-Bernard Mâche, Guy Médigue, Chikashi Miyama, Lukas Nowok, Gerard Pape, Marcin Pietruszewski, Brigitte Robindoré, Julia Rommel, Julian Scordato, Takehito Shimazu, Victoria Simon, Andrey Smirnov, Ronald Squibbs, Katerina Tsioukra, Peter Weibel.
Edited by Peter Weibel, Ludger Brümmer and Sharon Kanach
Publisher Hatje Cantz, Berlin, and ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2020
Open access
ISBN 9783775747417, 3775747419
672 pages
PDF, PDF (12 MB)
Audio samples and additional archive material
Joel Chadabe: Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music (1997)
Filed under book | Tags: · computer music, electronic music, music, music criticism, music history, musical instruments, sound, sound synthesis
A classic of electronic music history based on 150 interviews by an active participant in the northeast American scene.
Publisher Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1997
ISBN 0133032310, 9780133032314
xiv+370 pages
via x
Reviews: Marc Battiq Ircam (Leonardo Music Journal, 1997), Anna Laura Arpel (Computer Music Journal, 1997), Warren Burt (Computer Music Journal, 1998), Rebecca Coyle (Convergence, 1999), Darwin Grosse (Cycling74, 2018), Jay Williston (Synthmuseum, n.d.).
PDF (44 MB)
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