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David Cope, the Algorithmic Composer . Madison, WI Book reviews Perry R. Cook (ed.), Music, Cognition, and Computer- studied to inform emulation synthesis. The bulk of this ized Sound: An Introduction to Psychoacoustics. Cam- material probably would not appear in a psychoacoustics bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. ISBN0-26203-256-2. book that did not have a computer music research frame. The chapters that discuss the role of tactile feedback The preface of Music, Cognition, and Computerized processes (haptics) in musical sound production and per- Sound describes the work as an introduction to psycho- ception are another distinctive aspect of the book. I par- acoustics, geared to those interested in music. Designed ticularly welcome the inclusion of this topic, with hopes to function as a textbook for independent study or for that it will bring the importance of tactile sense in courses at the college sophomore level or above, each expressive instrumental control further to the foreground of the book’s chapters provides a succinct treatment of in computer music research. a given topic. These are intended to be readily adaptable The final chapter in the book is a brief introduction to to lecture presentation or specific research needs. An designing experiments in perception, geared towards the appendix containing suggested exercises for labs and expectation that students taking a course complete a another containing questions and thought problems fur- simple experiment in psychoacoustics as a term project. ther support classroom instruction. The work is accom- Given that many students likely to be taking such a panied by a combined audio CD and CD-ROM provid- course would not be trained in this discipline, this chap- ing sound examples related to the text and source code ter seems a valuable and helpful addition. It covers the for those examples. goals of scientific research, different types of studies, The terms used in the title – music, cognition, compu- common flaws in research design, ethical issues, and terized sound and psychoacoustics – together represent statistical methods. It is clear, particularly in the latter a vast arena of potential inquiry. The scope of the book case, that the one chapter cannot truly do the topic just- can be described as the intersection of those four ice. But enough material is provided to cultivate critical domains plus specific trajectories that computer music thinking about experiment design at an introductory inquiry has taken historically, particularly at Stanford level. University’s Center for Computer Research in Music Only a few things struck me as out of place or incom- and Acoustics (CCRMA). In fact, the book finds its gen- plete. The chapter on ‘Storage and Reproduction of esis in a course offered at CCRMA since the 1980s. All Music’ discusses the encoding and reproduction of of the contributing authors – John Chowning, Perry R. music. This is a topic of interest to the computer music Cook, Brent Gillespie, Daniel J. Levitin, Max Mathews, researcher, and it is certainly linked to issues of percep- John Pierce and Roger Shepard – have been faculty, tion. But in the form presented in the chapter – touching researchers or students at Stanford. How this prominent with only the briefest of treatments on topics such as lineage in computer music research defines the content LPC, deterministic and stochastic elements in phase voc- of the book provides an interesting point of reflection. oder analysis, and loudspeaker reproduction – it does not Within the common domain of psychoacoustics, the seem very helpful. The chapter ‘Passive Nonlinearities book covers the physiology of the ear, cognitive psycho- in Acoustics’, while potentially quite interesting, pro- logy related to hearing, the definition and metrics of vides its concrete examples primarily in terms of circuit sound, auditory scene analysis, scales and tunings in design and thereby probably precludes meaningful relationship to perception, and musical memory. understanding by people not versed in electrical engin- Beyond this, the research interests of Chowning and eering. There was an opportunity lost here to provide a Cook are represented in a relatively large volume of bridge to understanding of physical modelling in general material on the human voice, primarily on the mechanics and the role and modelling of nonlinearities in particular. of production and to a lesser degree on perceptual issues. I was pleased with the clarity of the language and This incursion into the physics of sound production is the presentation of ideas. I only identified a handful of extended with materials on vibrato and nonlinearity in sentences or paragraphs where I found the language sound production mechanisms. The appearance of these overly convoluted or explanations incomplete. As such, topics reflects a historical computer music research the book should function effectively in its intended intro- thread in which the physics of sound production is ductory textbook role at the college level. However, at Organised Sound 5(2): 111–116 2000 Cambridge University Press. Printed in the United Kingdom. 112 Book reviews times assumptions are made about the level of under- humour as a welcome flavouring). The book should standing of the reader that may not prove to be true. prove useful to people seeking to couple research in In many settings, for example, one cannot assume that computer music and composition with an awareness of students will have a working familiarity with logar- psychoacoustics and the physics of sound. The content ithms – or be able to readily extend the idea of logar- is clearly defined by the historical trends of computer ithms into an understanding of decibel measures. Terms music research, and their unfolding at CCRMA in par- like ‘centroid’ or ‘inverse square law’ (or even the math- ticular. But that is probably good news for people ematical description of the Fourier series!) appear in the researching and teaching psychoacoustics in the com- text with little or no explanation. Materials that can puter music context. Portions of the book may prove less address some of these gaps can be found in the useful to people who do have an interest in music or Appendix. For example, the suggested exercises for Lab sound but not in computer music per se. The book seems 2 provide some elaboration on the difference between thoughtfully designed as a core text and resource for a linear and logarithmic scales and relates this to the cal- college course and will serve well as such coupled with culation of decibel measures. supplementary explanation. Though the book does not address aesthetic issues dir- ectly, the materials certainly hold aesthetic implications. Bret Battey Some of these seem likely to raise the eyebrows of com- posers inclined towards acousmatic theory or those seek- Patricia Kruth and Henry Stobart (eds.), Sound.New ing to make spatialisation a primary carrier of musical York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 235 pp. ISBN meaning. In particular I refer to discussions of just 0-521-57209-6. RRP $34.95. noticeable differences in musical attributes and Shepard’s discussion of ‘dispensable versus indispens- God! Well, it starts with him and ends in ‘audiovisiogen- able attributes’ of musical sound. In a way, I wish that ics’. It is in fact 235 pages of reworked Cambridge the book had addressed the aesthetic issues head-on in Darwin College lectures from the 1997 series. ‘Some these contexts, though it is arguably out of scope. I find Aspects of Sound’ would have been a more descriptive it remarkable the degree to which discussions of music title. One might add ‘. without any sound’, since there theory are separated from discussions of psychoacous- are frequent references to sound recordings, but no CD. tics. Ultimately, music theory and psychoacoustic I imagine that the original lectures would have been research will be tightly linked. We may be a long way ‘illustrated’, or if you want to progress Michel Chion’s away from the time when that can occur in a truly sub- path, ‘audificated’. stantive fashion, but the implications of psychoacoustics There are nine essays: ‘Re-Sounding Silences’ (Philip research for music theory can be discussed now in such Peek), ‘The Physics of Sound’ (Charles Taylor), ‘Hear- a way that connections between the two areas are ing’ (Jonathan Ashmore), ‘Sounds Natural: The Song of encouraged. The book could be used to trigger such dis- Birds’ (Peter Slater), ‘The Sounds of Speech’ (Peter cussion in a classroom setting. Such a discussion could Ladefoged), ‘Ancestral Voices’ (Christopher Page), also touch on experimental design issues: In what fash- ‘Shaping Sound’ (Brian Ferneyhough), ‘Sound Worlds’ ion might aesthetic and cultural assumptions distort the (Steven Feld) and ‘Audio-Vision and Sound’ (Michel design of psychoacoustic experiments and interpreta- Chion). tion? There is actually a tenth essay, ‘Introduction’, by the Though the disc that comes with the book is labelled editors who do a very good job in pulling the fairly dis- as a CD-ROM, it is also an audio CD. Audio CD track parate elements together. Although their ‘linguastics’ numbers appear in Appendix C, listed in relationship to (you see, I’m already hooked on Chion’s proposal that the chapters. Note, however, that the text itself contains we need new words to describe new ideas and percep- no direct references to the disc; the relationships tions of air-vibrations and their interrelationships with between the sound examples and the text are implicit our senses) – linguistic gymnastics – are admirably rather than explicit. There were a few cases where it was inspirational, they still point out the fundamental prob- not clear to me how a given sound example related to the lem of describing and discussing aspects of sound with text. The CD-ROM portion of the disc contains CSound, no sound. To signal that they knew it was the tenth ANSI-C, MIDI and PV-script sources for generating the essay, they end with six references for further reading.
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