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Leonardo Music Journal Vol. 4 (1994)

with Compact Disc

Leonardo Music Journal is a print journal edited by Leonardo/the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, and published annually by the MIT Press.

ONLINE ACCESS: Subscriptions to Leonardo Music Journal include access to electronic versions of journal issues available on The MIT Press website.

ORDER: Subscriptions, individual issues and articles can also be ordered from The MIT Press.

[ See also the Tables of Contents and Abstracts of past issues of Leonardo and LMJ ]

ARTIST'S NOTE: Music from the Center of the Earth: Three Large-Scale Sound Installations

by ALVIN CURRAN

ABSTRACT The author describes Music from the Center of the Earth, a series of three electronic music installations deploying underground loudspeakers in various configurations. The works described are Notes from Underground, a tape piece realized in conjunction with Melissa Gould's light installation, Floor Plan; The Magnetic Garden, a collective musical earthwork united by the author's underground sound chambers and musics emulating biological time; and The Listening Well, an interactive listening and performing space that centers around a well designed both to play back a continuous sound-portrait of the world and to dialogue with sounds "cast" in it by the public.

ARTIST'S NOTE: Radio Art in Waves

by FRANCES DYSON

ABSTRACT Through descriptions of three of her sound pieces---The Logic of Waste (1989), Voices Lost and Calling (1990) and Highways to Virtuality (1991)---the author outlines some of the theoretical concepts and strategies that underlie her work, and the way they relate to both her compositional practice and her choice of aural material. Through this description, central concerns of her work---such as the impact of technology, the Western worldview and the status of sound in Western culture, ecology and militarism---are exemplified, and the importance of audio art as an appropriate medium for addressing these issues is highlighted.

ARTIST'S NOTE: Transients of Attack and Hybrid Sounds: Toward a New Mixity

by MICHAEL LEVINAS

ABSTRACT This article aims to explain the compositional principles of the author's Prefixes (1991), for instrumental ensemble and MIDI clavier. For him, this composition represents a new "mixity" between direct sound and loudspeaker sound that has come out of computer synthesis. "Mixity" is a term specific to the author's music that differs from both "mix" and "mixture" through its reference to this combination of electrically amplified and non-amplified sound. Prefixes is the logical outcome of the author's development of the principle of hybridized sound. Hybridization affects the transients of attack: the neuralgic and decisive moment from which instrumental sound surges. The theory of mixity concentrates on the hybridization that results from fixing signaling particles to the initiative of a sonorous, acoustic entity.

ARTIST'S NOTE: Interactive Radio

by GREG SCHIEMER

ABSTRACT Despite prevailing program formats, broadcast radio is a medium in which an unprecedented level of communal participation can be combined with the public exposition of private sound worlds. Two of the author's recent broadcast radio events are discussed here in detail: Concert on Bicycles (1983--1984), a program broadcast from a community radio station to an audience of cyclists who participated by riding en masse while listening to portable radios attached to their bicycles; and Talk-Back Piano (1991), an interactive radio broadcast during which members of the radio audience telephoned the radio station and used vocal and other sound to influence a live-to-air improvisation taking place on a computerised player-piano called a Disklavier.

TECHNICAL ARTICLE: Brahms at the Piano: An Analysis of Data from the Brahms Cylinder

by JONATHAN BERGER AND CHARLES NICHOLS

ABSTRACT In 1889, Johannes Brahms recorded a segment of the first of his Ungarische Tanze (Hungarian Dances) in an arrangement for solo piano. The authors describe the analysis and reconstruction of this recording and examine the implications of this work as a contribution to the understanding of performance practices in the late nineteenth century.

TECHNICAL ARTICLE: L-Systems, Melodies and Musical Structure

STEPHANIE MASON AND MICHAEL SAFFLE

ABSTRACT Among musical symmetries and self-similarities are those that can be produced using Lindenmayer-system (L-system) curves to generate melodies and rhythmic patterns. In 1986, Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz introduced a simple method of producing relatively complex musical scores that incorporate a legible internal structure. Using a scheme called edge-rewriting, one of the authors, Stephanie Mason, has extended Prusinkiewicz's methods to generate melodies and polyphonic structures that conform to traditional Western expectations. By stretching certain L-system curves, she has also duplicated melodic phrases associated with hundreds of pre-existing works by classical and popular Western composers. The authors discuss the possible link between the perception of musical beauty and the fractal or quasi-fractal character of music associated with L-system curves.

SPECIAL SECTION:

Sounding the Mind: Music and Cognitive Theory

Guest Editor: Kathryn Vaughn

Introduction: Music, Cognition and Culture

by KATHRYN VAUGHN

Music and Trance

by JUDITH BECKER

ABSTRACT The author discusses the relationship between music and trance in terms of new theories of mind and brain. She uses examples from several music cultures, including trance in the Rangda/Barong ritual of Bali.

Mathematics and Music: A Search for Insight into Higher Brain Function

by WENDY BOETTCHER, SABRINA HAHN and GORDON SHAW

ABSTRACT

A profound problem of historical origin and continuing interest is the relationships and similarities among higher brain functions relating to music, mathematics and chess. The authors present the results of detailed interviews with 14 professors of mathematics concerning their research and possible relationships between mathematics and music. The results provide interesting insights into higher brain function, suggesting a common theme of pattern development. In addition, the authors propose some new behavioral experiments.

On the Tuning and Stretched Octave of Javanese Gamelans

by EDWARD CARTERETTE and ROGER KENDALL

ABSTRACT The authors fit five theoretical models to the frequency-scale (Hz) data reported by Surjodiningrat, Sudarjana and Susanto on individual instruments from their extensive measurements of the tunings of 76 Javanese gamelans. The exponential models fit best and perfectly in the case of either nearly equal-interval pentatonic (slendro) scales or unequal- interval heptatonic (pelog) scales. Further, relative to the (presumed) mild stretching of Western scales, both Javanese scales are considerably stretched. The exponential model may be useful in comparing the highly variable tunings of gamelans, in studying defunct or incomplete ensembles, for generating variable stretchings for use in perceptual and cognitive studies on the aesthetics of gamelans, or for computer modeling of gamelan instruments.

The Fusion and Layering of Noise and Tone: Implications for Timbre in African Instruments

by CORNELIA FALES and STEPHEN MCADAMS

ABSTRACT Since their earliest explorations of African music, Western researchers have noted a fascination on the part of traditional musicians for noise as a timbral element. The authors present the results of perceptual and acoustic investigations of the fusion and "layering" of noise and tone. These results have implications for pitch and timbre in both traditional and non-traditional, acoustic and synthesized music. The results define possible perceptual relations between noise and tone and reveal that the construction of noise devices should follow relatively precise acoustic rules involving the frequency, the bandwidth and the level of the noise relative to those of the tone. The results also exemplify the fusion of two extremely different timbres, with implications for the blending of instrumental timbres in an orchestral setting. The experiments should be of interest to composers who synthesize mixtures of noise and periodic sound and for whom the control of such mixtures remains problematic.

Computers, Composition and the Challenge of "New Music" in Modern India

by JAMES KIPPEN and BERNARD BEL

ABSTRACT The use of sophisticated computer systems in the design and performance of music has taken place in the context of a society that demands novelty and expects technology to play a leading role in extending the boundaries of what is musically possible. This article describes a different approach to the use of technology in composition and an alternative technology that grew out of research into the complex rhythmic intricacies of Indian drum music. The authors present the new version of their Bol Processor and explain its time accuracy, flexibility and capacity to manipulate highly complex polymetric symbols. The authors' work has inspired further developments by Indian researchers who are rising to the challenge of developing a technology built around concepts familiar to the Indian musical mind as an alternative to models dependent upon Western concepts.

Musical Scales in Central Africa and Java: Modeling by Synthesis

by FREDERIC VOISIN

ABSTRACT The author's research on the tuning and scale systems of the Central African xylophone and Javanese gamelan has departed from previous Western ethnomusicological studies in these areas. Rather than relying on acoustical measurement as a primary source of data, his team has adopted an interactive approach involving the participation of Central African and Javanese musicians, who work with researchers to demonstrate their tuning processes using synthesizers and MIDI systems. The author presents results of this experimentation and explains the inconsistencies of previous research in terms of differing cultural concepts of scale.

CD COMPANION: CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES

RICARDO DAL FARRA: Some Comments about Electroacoustic Music and Life in Latin America

Contributors' Notes by LEON BIRIOTTI, JOSE AUGUSTO MANNIS, CARLOS VAZQUEZ, ROBERTO MORALES-MANZANARES, PABLO FREIRE, ANDRES POSADA, ADINA IZARRA, RICARDO DAL FARRA

MUSIC/SCIENCE FORUM

CHRISTOPHE CHARLES: Megalopolis Aborigines: The Tokyo-Osaka Action Art Ensemble's 1992 Tour

TAKEHITO SHIMAZU: The History of Electronic and Computer Music in Japan: Significant Composers and Their Works

REVIEWS

Contributors: MARC BATTIER, GERALD HARTNETT, AXEL MULDER

CD COMPANION

LMJ CD Series Volume 4 (1994): Musica Electroacustica de Compositores Latinoamericanos

Curated by Ricardo Dal Farra