Aden Evens: Sound Ideas: Music, Machines, and Experience (2005)

As record collectors and file swappers know, the experience of music—making it, marketing it, listening to it—relies heavily on technology. From the viola that amplifies the vibrations of a string to the CD player that turns digital bits into varying voltage, music and technology are deeply intertwined.

What was gained—or lost—when compact discs replaced vinyl as the mass-market medium? What unique creative input does the musician bring to the music, and what contribution is made by the instrument? Do digital synthesizers offer unlimited range of sonic potential, or do their push-button interfaces and acoustical models lead to cookie-cutter productions? Through this interrogation of sound and technology, Aden Evens provides an acute consideration of how music becomes sensible, advancing original variations on the themes of creativity and habit, analog and digital technologies, and improvisation and repetition.

Sound Ideas reinvents the philosophy of music in a way that encompasses traditional aspects of musicology, avant-garde explorations of music’s relation to noise and silence, and the consequences of digitization.

Published by University of Minnesota Press, 2005
ISBN 081664537X, 9780816645374
203 pages

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FLOSS Manuals: Pure Data (2006–)

Pure Data (or Pd) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. Pure Data is commonly used for live music performance, VeeJaying, sound effects, composition, audio analysis, interfacing with sensors, using cameras, controlling robots or even interacting with websites. Because all of these various media are handled as digital data within the program, many fascinating opportunities for cross-synthesis between them exist. Sound can be used to manipulate video, which could then be streamed over the internet to another computer which might analyze that video and use it to control a motor-driven installation.

GNU General Public License version 2

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bang. Pure Data (2006)

“Pd (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. Pd is free software. It is subject of a constant process of change, revealing new characteristics with each application. Is it a tool/media/instrument? Is this a question that can be answered? Is it a decision that needs to be made at all?

This publication is a compilation of texts describing different approaches to Pd, a profile of its usage and development. It is contradictory, and at the end, one finds oneself with a lot of open questions, on a technical level as well as on a philosophical one.

The 1st International Pd-Convention in Graz in fall 2004 was the motivation for this book. The authors participated at this meeting, and an accompanying DVD shows some of the works that were presented at this occasion.”

With articles from: Frank Barknecht, Reinhard Braun, Ramiro Cosentino, Günther Geiger, Thomas Grill, Cyrille Henry, Jürgen Hofbauer, Reni Hofmüller, Werner Jauk, Brian Jurish, Andrea Mayr, Thomas Musil, Michael Pinter, Miller Puckette, Marc Ries, Winfreid Ritsch, Andrey Savitsky, Christian Scheib, Susanne Schmidt, Hans-Christoph Steiner, James Tittle, Harald A. Wiltsche, IOhannes m zmölnig.

Edited by Fränk Zimmer
Publisher Wolke, Hofheim, 2006
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.5 License
175 pages

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