Contact: A Journal for Contemporary Music (1971-1988) http://contactjournal.gold.ac.uk

Citation

Arnold, Stephen. 1977. ‘Review of First International Conference on , Massachusetts Institute of Technology’. Contact, 17. pp. 35-37. ISSN 0308-5066.

delivery of papers was strictly limited to fifteen minutes, with a NOTES: maximum of five minutes discussion, which made for extremely intense sessions. Even being a humble delegate was quite hard 'The 1976 ISCM World Music Days were held in the USA for the work: the second day's business, for instance, consisted of twelve first time during the Bicentennial Year. Between October 24and 30 papers. two panel discussions, an open discussion, two concerts thirteen concerts were given, centred on the New England and studio demonstrations, all shoe-horned into a fourteen-hour Conservatory at Boston. Sixty-six works of a great variety of day. nationalities and styles were performed. 1t was particularly exciting The main dissatisfaction I heard voiced, especially by composers, to hear students of the Conservatory (they played fifteen of the was that papers which discussed specific compositions, or works) and of the University of Iowa (four) playing to the best emphasised specifically musical questions, were rare to say the professional standards. least. The contributions from John Melby and Tracy Lind Petersen 2The same kind of grumbles from 'West Coasters' were evident in were among the memorable exceptions. The opportunity to redress relation to the selection of American works for the ISCM World the balance in the panel discussions was not effectively taken: the Music Days. one entitled 'What Do Composers Want from Technology?' had among its panel members a number of E"uropean composers whose poor English severely limited their contributions, with the result that the session degenerated into a rather pointless verbal duel between Richard Hoffman and the chairman, . The "concerts were held in the fine Kresge Auditorium at MIT. PAPERS PRESENTED AT THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL There were three solely of computer-synthesised compositions. A CONFERENCE ON COMPUTER MUSIC, 1976 fourth, presented jointly with the ISCM World Music Days, 1 was to have included three analogue and three digital works, but the ANALYSIS/ SYNTHESIS TECHNIQUES Barbaud and Radava·novic wor.ks were not given as the tapes were Analytic Signal Processing in Music Computation - James H. somehow mislaid the night before at the IS CM dinner at the Statler Justice, University of Tulsa, Oklahoma . Hilton Hotel in downtown Boston. They were replaced by two works Intensity Characteristics of a Synthesis Model for Producmg Brass given in the Computer Music Conference concerts, Jonathan Sounds- Ercolino Ferretti, University of Utah Harvey's Time Points and Tracy Lind Petersen's Everything and Music Synthesis by Optimal Filtering - James F. McGill, Nothing. (The concert will be restored to its intended shape for its Culler/ Harrison, Inc., California broadcasts around the world.) Practical Considerations in the Application of Linear Prediction to The original programme is listed below, as are those of the three Music Synthesis -R. Cann, P. Lansky, K. Steiglitz, and M . conference concerts. From these listings, apart from the obvious, Zuckerman, , New Jersey understandable and inevitable American predominance, a rather The Use of the Phase Vocoder in Computer Music Applications- more surprising bias is apparent. Of the thirteen works in these James A. Moorer, Stanford University, California three concerts, six were realised using MUSIC 360, the synthesis SYNTHESIS HARDWARE program developed by the main conference organiser, Barry A Real-Time Computer Controlled Digital Oscillator Bank- G. Di Vercoe. A further three were realised on the new MIT system, Giugno, IRCAM, Paris. developed under Vercoe's direction. Ten of the thirteen were Microprocessors: A Multiprocessing Approach to Real-Time Digital realised at Princeton University or M IT; none was the product of a Sound Synthesis - Bruce Hemingway and David K. Barton, hybrid system. When I later asked Barry Vercoe about these points, University of Indiana he explained that the works presented were chosen by a panel and VOSIM Sound Synthesis - Stan Tempelaars, Institute for were the best submitted. Sonology, Utrecht, Netherlands On my travels further west after the conference it became clear Real -Time Tone Synthesis from White Noise Using High Speed to me that a considerable amount of resentment had built up Digital Speech Processors - David V. James, MIT because of the strong 'East Coast' flavour of these concerts. 2 Of couse, readers should realise that when one says 'East Coast' and MUSIC INPUT LANGUAGES AND EDITORS 'West Coast', one is not drawing just a geographical distinction, but MUSICA: A Language for the Transciption of Musical Texts for referring to a cultural division which is of crucial importance, at Computers - Giovanni B. Debiasi and Giovanni G. De Poli, least to many Americans. 'East Coast' tends to imply University of Padua, Italy 'deterministic', 'traditional', 'intellectual', 'establishment'. even, in Second Generation Music Input Terminals: The PCS -300 Music the musical world, 'twelve-note'; 'West Coast' tends to imply CRT- Armando Dal Mol in, Music Reprographics, Ltd., New York 'aleatoric', 'experimental', 'revolutionary', 'hippy'. (Perhaps I Stylus and Tablet: A Convenient Method for Music Input- Hal P. should add that these adjectives are here being used rather loosely Shearer and Alan C. Ashton, Brigham Young University, Utah and journalistically.) On the one side of the divide, one might place Interpretation of a Linear Music Notation for Automatic Playing and Babbitt, Carter, Vercoe, Wuorinen, et al; on the other, Cage, • Graphing of Classical MusicScores-Aian C. Ashtonand RobertF. Erikson, Oliveros, Reich. By eliminating the West Coast' therefore, Bennion, Brigham Young University, Utah the conference eliminated from its concert programmes an Computer On-Line Music Editing in a Compositional Environment: important facet of American culture. lt might be argued that, Some Special Considerations - Steven Haflich, MIT however the conference organisers view that facet, they had a responsibility to see that it was represented. (One could extend the SOUND SYNTHESIS LANGUAGES AND EDITORS argument and say that they should have made more of an effort to SPIRAL: A Signal Processing Research Language - John W. secure and promote more contributions from outside North Amuedo, Culler / Harrison, Inc., California America.) The counter-argument is that the selection panel should An Interactive Graphical Interface for MIT's MUSIC 360 Language promote only what it believes to be of genuine worth, rather than for Digital Sound Synthesis- Tom Creutz, University of Nebraska try to ensure wide representation merely for its own sake and OEDIT - An Interactive Orchestra Editing System - Richard regardless of merit. Steiger, MIT I for one was impressed with the high musical quality, individual character and expert execution of works such as Artifice by Paul USER PSYCHOLOGY 1: CONTROL OF TIMBRE Lansky, Templum by Hilary Tann (originally from Wales), Two A Topological Model for . the Perception of Context-Embedded Stevens Songs by John Melby and Synapse by Vercoe himself. A Timbres- David Rothenberg, Temple University, Pennsylvania Little Background Music was far too modestly titled by its Perceptually Based Controls for Additive Synthesis - David L. composer, Beverly Grigson. Wessel, Michigan State University and IRCAM, Paris In spite of the above reservations, and in spite of the fact that a number of the papers presented were comprehensible only to a few USER PSYCHOLOGY 11 : KNOWLEDGE BASED SYSTEMS specialists, the conference was in my view a great success, Capturing Intuitive Knowledge in Procedural Descriptions bringing home as it did the depth and breadth.of research effort in Jeanne Bamberger, MIT what is surely the most inspiring development in contemporary Toward a Theory of User Interfaces for Computer Music Systems- music making. lt was striking to discover many fine musicians who Otto E. Laske, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania were conversant, not to say fluent, in advanced computer science, and also computer scientists who had a subtle and sensitive grasp FACILITIES REPORTS of the musical problems of composers. (lt is frustrating, and even Outline of the Research at the CNUCE -CNR of Pisa, Italy- Pietro distressing, to contrast the situation here in Britain, which now Grossi, Pisa, Italy seems to me an illiterate society with regard to computer music.) Software Sound Synthesis in the United Kingdom - Stanley A number of papers are to be published by MIT Press. A booklet of Haynes, University of Southampton, England all the abstracts may be obtained from Barry Vercoe, Sound Language- George Cohn, Indiana University Department of Humanities, M IT, Cambridge, Mass. 02139, USA. as An Interactive Software System for Real-Time Sound Synthesis- can a catalogue of Computer Music Compositions of the United Grazian o Tisato, University of Padua, Italy States (1976) compiled by Carol Melby, ($5.00). The Second International Computer Music Conference is to take place on THE COMPOSER'S EXPERIENCE October 26-30, 1977, at the University of California at San Diego, Variable Amplitude Modulation by BUZZ - Joel Gressel, Baruch sponsored by the Music Department and the Center for Music College, City University of New York Experiment at UCSD. For registration or information, write to Composing with Cross-Synthesis - Tracy Lind Petersen, Computer Music Conference, UCSD - 0037, La Jolla, California University of Utah 92093, USA. I wonder if anybody from Britain will manage to get Compositional Approaches to the Combination of Live Performers there this year. with Computer-Produced Tape -John Melby, University of Illinois

36 DIGITAL SOUND RECORDING AND EDITING All-Digital Sound Recording and Processing- Loren Rush, James A. Moorer and Gareth D. Loy, Stanford University, California A Portable Off-Line Tape Recorder for Recording, Archiving, and Duplicating Digitized Music - Robert B. lngebretsen, Thomas CONTEMPORARY Greenway Stockham, Jr., and Richard B. Warnock, Soundstream, Inc., Utah MUSIC NETWORK Floating Point Encoding for Transcription of High Fidelity Audio Signals - Francis F. Lee and David Lipschutz, MIT MATRIX Jane Manning (soprano) SYSTEM DESIGN PHILOSOPHIES 0 I iver K nu ssen Trumpets Aspects of Computer Music System Design- Bruce E. Rittenbach, Avril Anderson La Jolla, California Mono-Status Input Languages Affect System Design - Wayne Slawson, Dallapiccola Machado Songs University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Dallapiccola Goethe Lieder The Inverse Relation Between Generality and Strength in Michael Tippett Piano Sonata No. 2 Computer Music Programs - Barry Truax, Simon Fraser Harrison Birtwistle Death of Orpheus University, British Columbia, Canada October REAL-TIME CONTROLS An Inexpensive Computer-Driven Organ Playing System -Jeffrey 2 The Maltings, Farnham H. Lederer, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 3 The Library Theatre, Luton An Input Interface for the Real-Time Control of Musical Parameters 4 Cl ifton Site, Trent Polytechnic, -Paul Edward Dworak, Carnegie-Mellon-University, Pennsylvania Nottingham The Conductor Program - M. V. Mathews, IRCAM, Paris 5 Warwick University 8 Bolton Central Library INTERACTIVE COMPOSING Real-Time Interactive Compositional Procedures - Emmanuel 9 Farnworth Methodist Church Hall, Ghent, New York City Widnes Composing Hybrid Music with an Open, Interactive System- Larry 10 Huddersfield Polytechnic Austin, University of South Florida . 11 York Arts Centre Interactive Woman-Machine Improvisations -Joseph Pinzarrone, 13 Turner Sims Concert Hall, Southampton University of Delaware • 14 Christ's Hospital Arts Centre, Horsham ' QUARTERNITY with GORDON BECK- keyboard (Henry Lowther, Stan Salzmann, Trevor Tomkins, CONCERT PROGRAMMES AT THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL Phil Lee, Chris Lawrence) CONFERENCE ON COMPUTER MUSIC October (Information appears in the following order: composer's name, home institution, title of work, date of composition, place of 18 Great Harwood Sporting Club, realisation, technical details.) Lancashire 19 Liverpool (Jazz Centre Society) PROGRAMME 1 Jonathan Harvey (University of Sussex, UK), Time Points ( 1970; 20 Band on the Wall, Manchester Princeton; MUSIC 360) 21 Leeds Playhouse (late night) Hilary Tann (Princeton University), Templum (1975; Princeton; 22 Hurlfield Campus, Sheffield MUSIC 360) 23 Phoenix Theatre, Leicester Beverly Grigsby (California State University at Northridge),A Little Background Music (1976; Stanford; MUSIC 1 0) 24 Aston, Centre for the Arts, Birmingham (Princeton University), Artifice ( 1975-6; Princeton; 25 Solent Suite, Southampton Guildhall MUSIC 4 BF & Music 360) . 26 Bridgwater Arts Centre PROGRAMME 2 John Melby (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Two SPECULUM MUSICAE Phyllis Bryn-Julson (soprano) Stevens Songs for soprano and computer .( 1976; University of Illinois & Princeton; MUSIC 360) Stravinsky Three Songs from Richard Hoffman (Oberlin Conservatory, Ohio), In Memoriam Patris William Shakespeare ( 1976; M IT; MUSIC 11) Robin Holloway The Rivers of Hell * Barry Vercoe (M IT), Synapse for viola and computer ( 1976; M IT; Elliot Carter A Mirror on which to Dwell Music 11) Tracy Lind Petersen (University of Utah), Everything and Nothing Stefan Wolpe Piece for Two Instrumental ( 1976; University of Utah;?) Units Donald Martino Notturno PROGRAMME 3 Barry Truax (Simon Fraser University, B.C., Canada), The Journey *World premiere ( 1972; Simon Fraser University; POD 5 & POD 6) P. Howard Patrick (Washington, D.C .), Suspensions ( 1973; November Princeton; MUSIC 360) 1 Wigmore Hall, London Michael Dellario (Princeton University), Maud for soprano and 2 York University computer (1974; Princeton; MUSIC 4BF) Ethan Haimo (University of Indiana at South Bend), Convergence 3 Huddersfield Polytechnic ( 1973; Princeton; Music 360) 5 Cambridge University Alva Couch (M IT), Surges ( 1976; M IT; MUSIC 11) 7 Keele University 8 Royal Northern College, Manchester ISCM CONCERT 9 Leeds University Knut Wiggen (Stockholm), Resa (1974; Stockholm; computer 10 Lancaster University realised) 11 Liverpool University Enrique Raxach (Netherlands). Chimaera for bass clarinet and tape ( 1974; 7; analogue) For further details, please contact: Pierre Barbaud (IRIA, Paris), Ars Recte Computandi ( 1975; Annette Morreau, Music Department, CEMAMu; CGM & Saltatio, computer realised) Arts Council of Great Britain, Vladan Radovanovic (Belgrade), Electra ( 1974; Radio Belgrade; 105 Piccadilly, London, W1V OAU. EMS, analogue) Tel: 01-629 9495. And re Laporte (Belgium), Harry's Wonderland for bass clarinet and tape (1976; ?; analogue) Benjamin Boretz (Bard College, N.Y.), Group Variations 11 (1973; Arts Council Autumn Tours 1977 Pnnceton and Bell Telephone; MUSIC 360) OF GREAT BRITAIN

37