Sound Synthesis Procedures as Texts: An Ontological Politics in Electroacoustic and Computer Music

Stochastics and Granular Sound in Xenakis' Electroacoustic Music ()

In some of his early electroacoustic pieces, Xenakis pursued ground-breaking explorations in territories that, in retrospect, appear quintessential to his work in general. If we consider those electroacoustic works alongside with orchestra music like Pithoprakta (1955-56) and Achorripsis (1956-57), we get a composite picture where the theory of "stochastic music" is often managed in conjunction...

A Computer-Controlled Sound Distribution System for the Performance of Electroacoustic Music

Since the advent of electroacoustic music, and even earlier, musicianshave shown an interest in using the spatial distribution of sound as a significant consideration in composition. Whilethere have been many attempts to realize the musical potential suggested by this possibility, certain problems have intervened. Significantly, these have been primarily in the technological rather than the mus...

Computer Sound Synthesis in 1951: The Music of CSIRAC

Computer Music Journal, 28:1, pp. 10–25, Spring 2004 q 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Australian-built ‘‘automatic computer’’ initially known as the CSIR Mk1, and later known as CSIRAC, was one of the world’s earliest storedprogram electronic digital computers (Williams 1997). (See Figure 1.) Coincidentally, it may also have been the Ž rst computer to play music, even though la...

The Immersive Computer-controlled Audio Sound Theater: Experiments in multi-mode sound diffusion systems for electroacoustic music performance

Multi-channel sound diffusion has been an essential part of the electroacoustic music process from the very beginning of the genre. We see early experimentation in sound spatialization in Varèse’s use of loudspeaker “paths” in Poéme Èlectronique, Stockhausen’s experiments in quad and cubebased speaker arrangements (Chadabe 1997), and Chowning’s computational approach to sound diffusion in works...

Moving Sound Source Synthesis for Binaural Electroacoustic Music Using Interpolated Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs)