John Chowning

John Chowning (1934 -) is a type-setter and enquiring American. Pioneer of the music by computer, it discovered the Frequency modulation, and allowed the numerical first synthesis of the sounds by means of the Synthèse FM.

Biography

Born with Salem (New Jersey), it studies the composition during three years with Paris with Nadia Boulanger. Of return to the United States, it will follow courses to the Université of Stanford with Leland Smith. In 1966, it leaves graduate. It is with max Mathews at the laboratories of the Beautiful Telephone and with David Poole in Stanford, that it will develop in 1964 a program of sound Synthèse thus carrying out with average data processing of the laboratory of Artificial intelligence of Stanford the first signification advances of the musical Informatique.

In 1967, Chowning develops the synthesis by Frequency modulation. This discovery was revolving essence in the history of the sound synthesis by computer, because it offered simple means and elegant to create and control the stamp of the sounds. For six years more, Chowning worked with the improvement of the synthesis by frequency modulation. In 1973, it began a collaboration with the firm Yamaha in Japan in order to design a synthetizer general public exploiting its process of synthesis. It was the beginning long and profitable series of synthetizers which became the most used electronic instruments modern music (DX7…)

In residence in Berlin in 1974 (DAAD), it then worked with the Ircam of 1978 with 1985.

He currently teaches the synthesis of the sound by computer and the composition by computer at the University of Stanford. He was the director of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), one of the most important research center musical.

Work

John Chowning used research in Psychoacoustique to translate the auditive illusion of a movement. With the beginning of the year seventy it composes thus its works Sabelithe (1971), then Turenas (1972). By comparison, during the World Fair of 1970 in Osaka, Stockhausen had tried a similar experiment of displacement of a sound source, in a spherical Auditorium which implemented eight hundred Haut-parleur S. Thanks to the Ordinateur, John Chowning could, to more finely control the phenomenon in an only quadraphonic system to him. The computer program represents displacements of the source according to the same parameters as those used by the Audition to evaluate the successive positions and thus the movement of a its.

In the musical experimentation of sound, certain criteria of relevance psychoacoustics can either be posed a priori, i.e. to provide a constraint, or to obey a new vision of musical material. It is to direct research in these two directions that was created in Stanford in the Seventies the CCRMA ( Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustic ), laboratory of artificial intelligence of the university Stanford, department of music, where John Chowning, James Moorer and John Grey undertook their first work on the sound synthesis, the analysis and psychoacoustics.

In 1971 Chowning developed the Frequency modulation which will be the subject of a article published in 1973. It was thus necessary to await the development of the Microprocesseur S and the economy of the method offered so that the richness of the synthetic sounds fulfills the requirements desired by the musicians.

Works

In 1971, Chowning writing its first part with computer, Sabelithe , used the quality of the numerical control of the parameters of space not only to carry out an original part, but also to create a form of listening related to a quite particular process. Then digital technologies will start, in the middle of the Seventies, to join the constraints which the type-setter wants to impose to him; the musical expression anchored on the bottom is used to create form S which transport the listener in a particular universe. This play of the expressivity of a musical project, adapted to the set of relations between general and private individual, Chowning will use it with relevance in its work Stria (1977). It orders there its composition around the local phenomenon of Consonance (characterized by the spectral envelope and the reports/ratios of transposition), and controls to become it of these resonances by the computer using the economic formulas of synthesis by Frequency modulation which it itself updated. Inside the sound, he plays to lose the listener in the construction of a spectrum Inharmonique (reports/ratios carrying - modulating irrational) and founded on cohesion (report/ratio equal to the Golden section). In spite of the little of references to the known one, which at very other would lose the listener in the vast immersion of the virtual one, with Chowning this feeling of strangeness is centred in a perceptive cohesion, kind to focus the attention behind representations height (amalgamated spectral concentrations, microtones…) and of organization of time (exponential growth and decrease, speed of a Glissando, attacks…). The share of microphone-organization of sound develops the formal characteristics of a macroniveau, deployment in the space and the time of original material. Formal balance thus manages to be maintained thanks to a functional balance anticipated by the type-setter. Analysis of the macroscopic and microscopic perceptive functions (perception of the variance, beam of remanent indices, controls dissonance…), and of the phosphorescent memory, moved by articulations which act like recalls, allows to intervene pertinently on the perception of the total structure For the listener it results from it that the local structuring and the total form (dynamic increasing and decreasing, Antiphonie) are answered and reinforced as a multitude of single moments which interact.

Articles

  • CHOWNING (John Mr.), “ The synthesis off audio complex will spectra by means off frequency modulations ”, Journal off the Audio Engineering Society (J.A.E.S.), vol. 21, n° September 7th, th and th 1973. 2nd publication: id. vol. 4 n° 2, Summer 1980, pp.13-25. 3rd publication: Computer Music Newspaper, April 1977, pp. 46-54. 4th publication in: Strawn (J.) and Roads (C.), The Foundation off Music Computer, Cambridge, MIT Close, pp. 6-29.

  • CHOWNING (John Mr.), “ The simulation off music sound sources”, 1st publication Newspaper off the Audio Engineering Society (J.A.E.S.), n° 19, pp. 2 - 6,1971, 2nd publication in: Computer Music Newspaper., vol. 1, n° June 3rd, th and th 1977, pp. 48-52.
  • CHOWNING (John Mr.), Sound Generation in winds, strings, Computers, Royal Academy off Music, n° 29, Stockholm, 1980.
  • CHOWNING (John Mr.), translated the Engl. one by Lacava (Jacques), new music and science: interdependence of the concepts”, in : The type-setter and the computer, Paris, IRCAM, 17 February 21st, 1981, pp. 33-37.
  • CHOWNING (John Mr.), John Chowning one composition”, in: Composers and the Computer, Roads (Curtis) (ED.), Los Violas, William Kaufman Inc., 1985,201 p., pp. 17-25.
  • Computer Music Newspaper -- The Reconstruction off Striated , MIT, Automne 2007,31:3

University work

  • Olivier Baudouin, Problem of the analysis of the musics conceived for recorded supports. Comparison of two works: Artikulation (1958) of György Ligeti and Striated (1977) with John Chowning . Rouen, Memory of Master II, 2006. Consultable with the media library of the IRCAM (reserve).

Works

  • John Chowning , coll " Polychromes" portraits; n° 7, Paris, Michel de Maule, 2005.

See too

Related articles

  • Data-processing musical
  • sound Frequency modulation
  • Synthesis

External bonds

  • Card Ircam on John Chowning * Drive Computer History Museum (in English) * John Chowning, FM and DX7

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