Musical data processing

Data-processing musical: sound synthesis and assistance with the composition.

In the Years 1950 - 1970, the rise of the numerical Technology of the Computer S.A. chamboulé the musical composition which, having approached the limits of the Electronic music, found there a certain logic of the writing. The Magnétophone was the invention which seemed to control time: it made it possible the Musique to become a Concrete music, when the Peinture, it, took refuge in the abstraction. Such a taking possession of material caused many theoretical and practical upheavals. The data-processing thus brought a new blood, making it possible achievements of another kind to be born.

First steps of a new technological art

It is in a context of crisis of the musical language (Dodécaphonisme then integral Sérialisme, Concrete music) that the musicians approach, initially with mistrust, this new instrument reserved as much for the construction of the sound (sound Synthèse) that with its organization (composition computer-assisted). The models suggested by the electronic prove to be poor; the stake is to try to redécouvrir what for twenty centuries has made the communicative richness of the sound: its life, its movement, its “emotion”.

The solutions suggested by the digital technique seem to have wanted to take the problem with arm the body by not eluding this double approach: on the one hand the type-setter is interested in the his itself, i.e. with a phenomenon of which it wishes to make a more malleable material. In addition, the Ordinateur deals with the composition of the music, initially by means of Graphical interface which transcribes the parameters symbolized behind the notes, then directly by the development of what it is from now on agreed to call a process compositionnel. One thus passed rather recently (towards the Années 1980 - 1990) to a dimension of renamed musical data processing musical composition computer-assisted (CMAO) which mixes creation with sound and the formal composition. Répons (1981) of Pierre Boulez, can be regarded as one of works headlights introducing this new form of use of the computer.

Microcomposition and macrocomposition

Such an amount of at the microscopic level, where the ear perceives the least variation of each component, which at the macroscopic level where the music builds a certain order in the entropic flow of time, the Art manages to project in the future. But rather than to copy a deterministic approach of the composition with harmonic laws, theories in musical composition, and a code of conduct of the musical thought, the Compositeur S redefined at the same time a news musical Psychoacoustique removed from the linear designs of the traditional Acoustique, and the requirements of a Poïétique which preserves the fundamental criteria of immediacy and spontaneousness. Reflections on the bottom, reflections on the form. Two tendencies which were never also closely dependant in the concerns of the type-setter, and that the computer knew to reconcile.

The computer, technological artist?

The raw material of the music remains always the Its musical, a kind of “given to understand” in its diversity of object “created”. We will not reconsider here the vexations and the successes of the Synthèse numerical of the sound, elaborate starting from 1957, and delayed by the slowness of the techniques of the time. But let us note however that it is of these investigations that were born the first reflections on the Psychoacoustique.

Research on the composition computer-assisted goes up as for them with 1955, and led in 1956 to the famous string quartet says “Illiac Suite”, worked out by Lejaren A. Hiller and Léonard Mr. Isaacson at the university of Illinois. Which were the basic postulates of work of Hiller and Isaacson? In the mobility of the theories Cybernétique S which granted a great confidence to the capacities of calculation (Artificial intelligence), they worked out a mathematical model of analysis - musical construction which, by adapting a treaty of harmony (in fact the treaty of 1725 of Johann Joseph Fux, Gradus AD Parnassum, and that of counterpoint of Palestrina) was used as a basis for a rebuilding. Hiller was a Scientifique, a Chimiste, and for him the decomposition was to allow recombining. To formalize certain writing rules and to return in the computer of the traditional diagrams compositionnels would be enough to translate the emotional or passion sides of the music by sets of rules and interdicts. To preserve a certain degree of artistic expression, the program simulated the aspect car-organized by introducing some aspects of the theories on the formalization of the chance (of the chains of Markov - formulation of the stochastic processes and a method Aléatoire of pulling of the numbers known as of “Monte Carlo”), sails very about it, they too. What made say to Hiller which “the music is a compromise between monotony and chaos”, but without never posing the problem of knowing which carried out this compromise.

Algorithmic; Programming

A definition Heuristique of the composition was then transcribed behind Algorithmes: it is the algorithmic Musique expensive with Pierre Barbaud, (1958, Bull Gén. El.). Other type-setting systems were defined by the type-setters themselves (exploration of the balanced models of A. Riotte for example). but they can do it only while being free, flexible, compared to the software of the machine. Then the programmers had to set up pilotings of these programs. The program translates the musical values into quantified measurements (for example the program SCORE of Leland Smith represents calculations of Trajectoire S, complete of the sections?). The CAD was transformed into assistance with the composition. These discrete formalizations of the personal thought of the type-setter are connected with a logical deduction. They do not constitute an obligatory, rigid, and unattainable framework.

Data-processing languages

Let us specify that the specialized graphical interfaces, languages or other software of assistance to the composition do not give, by definition, with the type-setter same freedom as that which the use of a general data-processing language would provide him. High-level languages such as Lisp, OCaml or Python or of the older languages such as Pascal, C, C++ are more powerful tools if the type-setter really seeks to escape the routine. Unfortunately, few type-setters are able to apprehend of such languages, and the interfaces (many) their unroll processual steps of which they must marry contours (programs MAX and Pure Dated (Pd), of Miller Puckette, for example).

The characteristic of these interfaces is to be often graphically a little more pleasing than the cycle: drafting of the program - > interpretation (in the case of Lisp or Python) - > listening - > correction of program etc This kind of user-friendliness is paid: the type-setter can see to disappear the freedom which he hoped for. To guarantee his freedom, the type-setter has only two possibilities: either to be made help, or to learn a high-level language.

As for the training of a high-level language, Lisp - which is at the base of the project Common Music - is certainly difficult to interiorize, while the Python language is completely accessible as an autodidact.

Certain institutions, such IRCAM, created a new form of collaboration: the " realizer in data processing musicale" or realizer electroacoustic ; in the past called musical assistant or tutor. Data processing specialist and musician of formation, this one works with (them) the type-setter (S) to create tools compositionnels, interprets the electronic part of the parts, ensures the perenniality of the systems used. This function of collaboration gradually became a true profession.

To compose of the music?

The musical Composition, like any form of artistic creation, postulates a nonconsidered translation of a métasensible universe which one sought to know. She thus claims, in fact, a reflection on the cogency of the relations between various forms of Représentation: Its musical, sound material on the one hand (its, instrument, stamp,…, but also virtual creations of spaces or auditive illusions), creation of the work on the other hand.

In the second time the reflection of the researchers was thus focused on certain strong points of the musical structure, in a staff management: how the work for a listener “functions”? Psychological S, creators and data processing specialists tried to propagate common reflections through specialized institutions in musical data processing. They at present lead to renamed computer programs musical composition computer-assisted (CMAO), or helps with the composition, and where the representation occupies all at the same time the local level of material and the total level of the structuring of work.

Inventory of fixtures

Today, the exponential progression of the capacity of the computers, allows any personal computer the installation of identical productions, where the listener takes part in the development of his own work.

The systems currently implemented try to gather, within open networks (data bank of sounds or modules of composition), of knowledge and the Apprentissage S private individuals offered by each one to provide to a whole a universal matrix. While sticking to the architecture of work, the Compositeur S perceived how the structuring is carried out not only by ideal models or developed starting from material, but also by immediate intuitions of the metamorphoses of these models. This homogeneous formalism provides a creation, single by nature and yet already united with the revelations of the universe.

Such a creation thwarts our linear vision of a time which passes in a direction. While introducing the concept of process compositionnel, of Semantic processual opened, the type-setters arrived, with musical data processing, to integrate the temporal evolution of work; either procedure it even, any strategy of the change, but quite certain continuous phases of this change. New musical modelings of the processes of composition, with work in the music computer-assisted in becoming, represent this permanent confrontation of sound abstract and its musical organization.

External bonds

most of the courses of the class of musical data processing of Caen in line
Formation with the techniques of the sound and data processing musciale…
pioneers of the Computer Music
120 years of electronic music
Contributions of applied information technology to the musical analysis - the example of work of Andre Riotte and Marcel Mesnage
a project of algorithmic realization of music in language Python
Elody, an environment for the musical composition
More information on Audiolexic, Wiki devoted to the Audio and the Music

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