Resynthesized It Using Granular Techniques
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Microsound This page intentionally left blank Curtis Roads Microsound The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England ( 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any elec- tronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Times New Roman in `3B2' by Asco Typesetters, Hong Kong and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Roads, Curtis. Microsound / Curtis Roads. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-18215-7 (hc. : alk. paper) 1. MusicÐAcoustics and physics. 2. Electronic musicÐHistory and criticism. 3. Computer musicÐHistory and criticism. I. Title. ML3805 .R69 2001 781.202Ðdc21 2001030633 Contents Introduction vii Acknowledgments ix Overview xi 1 Time Scales of Music 1 2 The History of Microsound from Antiquity to the Analog Era 43 3 Granular Synthesis 85 4 Varieties of Particle Synthesis 119 5 Transformation of Microsound 179 6 Windowed Analysis and Transformation 235 7 Microsound in Composition 301 8 Aesthetics of Composing with Microsound 325 9 Conclusion 349 References 353 Appendixes A The Cloud Generator Program 383 B Sound Examples on the CD 389 Name Index 399 Subject Index 403 This page intentionally left blank Introduction Beneath the level of the note lies the realm of microsound, of sound parti- cles. Microsonic particles remained invisible for centuries. Recent technological advances let us probe and explore the beauties of this formerly unseen world. Microsonic techniques dissolve the rigid bricks of music architectureÐthe notes Ðinto a more ¯uid and supple medium. Sounds may coalesce, evaporate, or mutate into other sounds. The sensations of point, pulse (regular series of points), line (tone), and sur- face (texture) appear as the density of particles increases. Sparse emissions leave rhythmic traces. When the particles line up in rapid succession, they induce the illusion of tone continuity that we call pitch. As the particles meander, they ¯ow into streams and rivulets. Dense agglomerations of particles form swirling sound clouds whose shapes evolve over time. In the 1940s, the Nobel prize winning physicist Dennis Gabor proposed that any sound could be decomposed into acoustical quanta bounded by discrete units of time and frequency. This quantum representation formed the famous Gabor matrix. Like a sonogram, the vertical dimension of the Gabor matrix indicated the location of the frequency energy, while the horizontal dimension indicated the time region in which this energy occurred. In a related project, Gabor built a machine to granulate sound into particles. This machine could alter the duration of a sound without shifting its pitch. In these two projects, the matrix and the granulator, Gabor accounted for both important domains of sound representation. The matrix was the original windowed frequency-domain representation. ``Windowed'' means segmented in time, and ``frequency-domain'' refers to spectrum. The granulation machine, on the other hand, operated on a time-domain representation, which is familiar to anyone who has seen waveforms in a sound editor. This book explores micro- sound from both perspectives: the windowed frequency-domain and the micro viii Introduction time-domain. Both concern microacoustic phenomena lasting less than one- tenth of a second. This book is the fruit of a lengthy period of activity involving synthesis experiments, programming, and composition dating back to the early 1970s. I started writing the text in 1995, after completing my textbook The Computer Music Tutorial (The MIT Press 1996). Beginning with a few strands, it eventu- ally grew into a lattice of composition theory, historical accounts, technical overviews, acoustical experiments, descriptions of musical works, and aesthetic re¯ections. Why such a broad approach? Because at this stage of development, the musical, technical, and aesthetic problems interweave. We are inventing particles at the same time that we are learning how to compose with them. In numerous ``assessment'' sections I have tried to summarize the results, which in some cases are merely preliminary. More experimentation is surely needed. Microsound records this ®rst round of experimentation, and thus serves as a diary of research. Certain details, such as the speci®c software and hardware that I used, will no doubt become obsolete rapidly. Even so, I decided to leave them in for the historical record. The experimentation and documentation could go on inde®nitely. One could imagine, for example, a kind of synthesis ``cookbook'' after the excellent exam- ple of Jean-Claude Risset (1969). His text provided detailed recipes for making speci®c sounds from a variety of synthesis techniques. This would be a worthy project, and I would encourage others in this direction. As for myself, it is time to compose. Acknowledgments This book derives from a doctoral thesis written for the Universite de Paris VIII (Roads 1999). It would never have started without strong encouragement from Professor Horacio Vaggione. I am deeply indebted to him for his patient ad- vocacy, as well as for his inspired writings and pieces. The congenial atmosphere in the DeÂpartement Musique at the Universite de Paris VIII was ideal for the gestation of this work. I would also like to ex- tend my sincere appreciation to Jean-Claude Risset and Daniel Ar®b. Despite much pressure on their time, these pioneers and experts kindly agreed to serve on the doctoral committee. Their commentaries on my text resulted in major improvements. I owe a debt of thanks to my colleague GeÂrard Pape at the Centre de CreÂation Musicale «Iannis Xenakis» (CCMIX) for his support of my research, teaching, and composition. I must also convey appreciation to Iannis Xenakis for his brilliant example and for his support of our work in Paris. My ®rst contact with him, at his short course in Formalized Music in 1972, started me on this path. I completed this book while teaching in the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE) in the Department of Music and in the Media Arts and Technology Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I greatly appreciate the friendship and support of Professor JoAnn Kuchera- Morin, Director of CREATE, during this productive period. I would also like to extend my thanks to the rest of the CREATE team, including Stephen T. Pope for his collaboration on pulsar synthesis in 1997. It was a great pleasure to work with Alberto de Campo, who served as CREATE's Research Director in 1999±2000. Together we developed the PulsarGenerator software and the Creatovox synthesizer. I consider these engaging musical instruments to be among the main accomplishments of this research. x Acknowledgments Allow me to remember my late colleague Professor Aldo Piccialli of the Department of Physics at the University of Naples «Federico II.» His intense fascination with the subject of microsound inspired me to dive deeper into the theory of musical signal processing, and led to the notion of pulsar synthesis. This exploration has been most rewarding. I also appreciate the discussions and correspondence with my friends in Naples, including Sergio Cavaliere, Gian- paolo Evangelista, and Giancarlo Sica. Many other colleagues provided information and advice, including Clifton Kussmaul, Corey Cheng, Tom Erbe, Christopher Weare, and Jean de Reydel- let. Brigitte RobindoreÂ, Pierre Roy, Jakub Omsky, Luca Lucchese, and Thom Blum kindly read parts of the manuscript and provided much valuable feed- back. Their comments are most appreciated. The MIT Press arranged for three anonymous reviews of the book. These critiques led to many improvements. I would also like to thank Douglas Sery of The MIT Press for his enthusiastic sponsorship of this project. Parts of this book were written during vacations at the family home in Illi- nois. I will always be grateful to my mother, Marjorie Roads, for the warm atmosphere that I enjoyed there during sabbaticals. Overview Chapter 1 projects a view of nine time scales of musical sound structure. It examines this hierarchy from both aesthetic and technical viewpoints. Major themes of this chapter include: the boundaries between time scales, the partic- ularities of the various time scales, and the size of sounds. Chapter 2 traces the history of the idea of microsound, from the ancient philosophy of atomism to the recent analog era. It explains how particle models of sound emerged alongside wave-oriented models. It then presents the modern history of microsound, beginning with the Gabor matrix. It follows the writings of a diverse collection of authors, including Ezra Pound, Henry Cowell, Werner Meyer-Eppler, Iannis Xenakis, Abraham Moles, Norbert Wiener, and Karl- heinz Stockhausen. It also looks at the viability of a microsonic approach in analog synthesis and instrumental music. Chapter 3 presents the theory and practice of digital granular synthesis in its myriad manifestations. It examines the di¨erent methods for organizing the grains, and looks at the e¨ects produced in each parameter of the technique. It then surveys the various implementations of computer-based granular synthe- sis, beginning with the earliest experiments in the 1970s. Chapter 4 is a catalog of experiments with newer particles, featuring glissons, grainlets, pulsars, and trainlets. We also