scholarly journals Reimagining (Accessible) Digital Musical Instruments: A Survey on Electronic Music-Making Tools

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Frid ◽  
Alon Ilsar
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Music ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Music Making

scholarly journals Exploring the motivations for building new digital musical instruments

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gina Emerson ◽  
Hauke Egermann
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Music ◽  
Interview Study ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Sound Synthesis ◽  
Responsive Systems ◽  
The Past ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Digital Sound

Over the past four decades, the number, diversity and complexity of digital musical instruments (DMIs) has increased rapidly. There are very few constraints on DMI design as such systems can be easily reconfigured, offering near limitless flexibility for music-making. Given that new acoustic musical instruments have in many cases been created in response to the limitations of available technologies, what motivates the development of new DMIs? We conducted an interview study with ten designers of new DMIs, in order to explore (a) the motivations electronic musicians may have for wanting to build their own instruments; and (b) the extent to which these motivations relate to the context in which the artist works and performs (academic vs club settings). We found that four categories of motivation were mentioned most often: M1 – wanting to bring greater embodiment to the activity of performing and producing electronic music; M2 – wanting to improve audience experiences of DMI performances; M3 – wanting to develop new sounds, and M4 – wanting to build responsive systems for improvisation. There were also some detectable trends in motivation according to the context in which the artists work and perform. Our results offer the first systematically gathered insights into the motivations for new DMI design. It appears that the challenges of controlling digital sound synthesis drive the development of new DMIs, rather than the shortcomings of any one particular design or existing technology.

scholarly journals Digital Musical Performance as the Refl ection of the Axiosphere of Culture and the Educational Space of the Digital Age

ICONI ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 87-97
Author(s):  
Natalia N. Petrova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Music ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Artistic Process ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Digital Performance ◽  
Generation Z ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Analysis Of Performance ◽  
Aesthetic Values

The article examines performance on contemporary digital musical instruments, such as the keyboard synthesizer, the digital piano, the digital button and keyboard accordion and others, as a direction of artistic creativity in the contemporary sociocultural space on demand by numerous music lovers and professional performers. Evaluation is given to the possibilities of functioning for electronic musical creativity in the culturalcreative, communicative and educational angles. A phenomenological analysis of performance on electronic musical instruments is carried out and data is provided about the peculiarities of the sociocultural perception among various target auditoriums. The heuristic potential of electronic music-making for the young generation is highlighted in the refl ection of the demands of generation Z on poly-timbre and multi-genres in the artistic process. Examples are brought of successful attempts of realizing of individual and ensemble digital performance which has made it possible to manifest the fundamental functions of artistic culture, to create a system of moral and aesthetic values which would be relevant for society, and to form an aesthetically organized, highly technological sociocultural milieu.

Control Interfaces Continued

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. J Manzo
Keyword(s):  
Basic Structure ◽  
Presentation Mode ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Object A ◽  
The Third ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Control Interface ◽  
Musical Concepts ◽  
Physical Abilities ◽  
Computer Keyboard

In this chapter, we will look at some innovative ways to control music making as we develop musical instruments. We will look at using your computer keyboard and mouse as performance instruments as well as discuss the use of videogame controllers in your patches. Designing your own custom musical instruments is a great way to tailor the controls to the specific physical abilities of users while allowing them to focus on certain specific musical concepts like pitches, scales, and harmony/chords. 1. Click on Extras>EAMIR from the top menu to view the main menu of the EAMIR SDK 2. In the umenu labeled Examples, click the third item 3.EAMIR _ASCII_Keyboard_Control.maxpat Unlock the patch that opens and look at its basic structure. As you can see, the patch is really just 4 bpatcher objects, 3 of which refer to patches we’ve already looked at. The newest bpatcher, at the top of the patch, is basically just a patch with a key object, a select object, and some fancy graphics—all things you learned to use in Chapter 3. Lock the patch and 3. Type your full name using your computer keyboard. Note that uppercase letters and lowercase letters trigger different buttons 4. Press the number keys 1–8 as these are mapped to message boxes containing numbers used as diatonic chord functions Without the top bpatcher, your patch generates chords in any key simply by clicking the message boxes. The top bpatcher is just a control interface that maps something (keys) to something else (message boxes). 5. Ctrl+click (Mac) or right click (Windows) the top bpatcher and select Object>Open Original “EAMIR_keyboard.maxpat” from the contextual menu This patch is set to open in Presentation mode. Unlock the patch and put it in Patching view. The contents of the patch are as I described: a key object, as well as a keyup object, are connected to two gigantic sel (select) objects containing the ASCII numbers for all the available characters on the computer keyboard nothing you couldn’t already do. In fact, the most impressive part of this patch, in my opinion, is the graphical part of it.

scholarly journals Scales of sustain and decay: making music in deep time

Popular Music ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-120
Author(s):  
Philipp Kohl
Keyword(s):  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Radioactive Material ◽  
Industrial Processes ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Nuclear Decay ◽  
Electric Guitar ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article explores the relationship between the human time of music making and the temporal layers that pervade the natural resources of musical instruments. It therefore offers case studies on two of popular music's most common instruments, the electric guitar and the synthesiser, and their symbolic and material temporalities: guitar players’ quest for ‘infinite sustain’ from Santana to today's effects manufacturers and the ‘psychogeophysical’ approach by artist and theorist Martin Howse, who developed a synthesiser module using radioactive material in order to determine musical events by nuclear decay. While language uses metaphors of sustain and decay as figurative ways to express both musical and planetary dimensions, practices of music offer alternative ecologies of relating the seemingly unrelatable scales of deep time and musical time. If in the Anthropocene humankind becomes aware of its role as a geophysical force, thinking about making music in the Anthropocene requires an awareness for the temporalities involved in the materials at hand. Besides an ecological perspective, the article looks at various media (magazines, ads, and manuals) and thus positions economical mechanisms of the musical instrument manufacturing market as a small-scale experimental setting for larger-scale industrial processes.

Genre and Capital in Avant-garde Electronica

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-71
Author(s):  
Eliot Britton
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Music ◽  
Electroacoustic Music ◽  
Music Technology ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Tools And Techniques ◽  
Flexible Boundaries ◽  
Structured Approach

This article applies a genre level approach to the tangled discourse surrounding the points of convergence between avant-garde electronica and electroacoustic music. More specifically the article addresses related experimental practices in these distinct yet related fields of electronic music-making. The democratisation of music technology continues to expand into an increasingly diverse set of musical fields, destabilising established power dynamics. A flexible, structured approach to the analysis of these relationships facilitates the navigation of crumbling boundaries and shifting relationships. Contemporary electronic music’s overlapping networks encompass varying forms of capital, aesthetics, technology, ideology, tools and techniques. These areas offer interesting points of convergence. As the discourse surrounding electronic music expands, so must the vocabulary and conceptual models used to describe and discuss new areas of converging artistic practice. Genre level diagrams selectively collapse, expand and arrange artistic fields, facilitating concrete, coherent arguments and the examination of patterns and relationships. Through the genre level diagram’s establishment of distinct yet flexible boundaries, electronic music’s sprawling discourse can be cordoned off, expanded or contracted to suit structured analyses. In this way, this approach clarifies scope and facilitates simultaneous examination from a variety of perspectives.

Tectonics Glasgow, 1–3 May 2015

Tempo ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (274) ◽  
pp. 62-64
Author(s):  
Matthew Hammond
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Free Improvisation ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
The Common ◽  
Music Programming

Ilan Volkov's Tectonics series continues to break new ground in contemporary music programming and curating. Tectonics has now seen its third edition in Glasgow, where Volkov conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and has also sprung up in other locations to which he has connections – beginning in his home city of Tel Aviv, the series has spread also to Reykjavik, Adelaide and New York. The common theme is a blend of new commissions (usually orchestral works), important recent works, and performances from figures from other areas of avant-garde music making – free improvisation, electronic music and the outer fringes of noise and metal.

scholarly journals “The Ensemble of Performers” in the Textures of Clavier Compositions by J.S. Bach

ICONI ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 24-29
Author(s):  
Elena V. Gordeyeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Basso Continuo ◽  
Human Voice ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Acoustic Images

The musical text of any of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works for clavier contains numerous artistic signs, semantic fi gures and expressive elements. Some of them bear within themselves signifi cations of diverse nuances of meaning and feelings through recreation of the scenes of music-making. Upon the defi nition of the semantic equivalent they align themselves into concrete plotline situations. The intonational formulas, the vertical and horizontal structures-dialogues, the acoustic images of musical instruments (including the human voice) imprinted in the musical texts of a composition — all of these semantic “characters” and “protagonists” designed to express the spirit of time, omnipresent, old and eternally new. The acoustic images in the structure of the musical texts may be extremely different: in the guises of duos, trios, baroque models with the participation of solo, basso continuo and tutti parts in their various alternations and combinations. The musical materials of suites and partitas are used in the article to trace the intertextual migration of typifi ed models of “migrating” images with the unfolding of the plotlines of “music within music.” Typifi ed dialogic structures are disclosed in the texture of the musical composition, and upon deciphering they become conducive towards a competent expressive articulation.

scholarly journals Trautonium: peculiarities of compositions for the electronic musical instrument

2020 ◽  
pp. 141-148
Author(s):  
Elena Nikolaevna Piryazeva
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Music ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Video And Audio ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
New Generation

The subject of this research is the electronic musical instrument trautonium and characteristic features of compositions written for this instrument. The advancement of electronic music and its instruments is substantiated by innovative transformation, constant emergence of new devices, their improvement and phasing out or transitions into a new generation of devices. One of such electronic musical instruments is trautonium, invented in the first half of the XX century. It did not gain much popularity, but gather its own repertoire and library of video and audio recordings. In the course of this research, the author applied the following methods: historical and systemic approaches; methods of integral, structural, stylistic, and comparative analysis. The novelty is defined consists in the subject of research, range of compositions attracted for musicological analysis, and the angle of their view. The author determines the common to compositions for trautonium concert character of performance reflected in the set of aesthetic and technological principles on various levels of musical composition.

Music at Hand

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan De Souza
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Music Cognition ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Transformational Theory ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
Music Theory And Analysis

Musical instruments ground players’ actions and the sounds they create. Yet this book further claims that instruments mediate perception and imagination. Practicing an instrument builds bodily skills, while also fostering auditory-motor connections in players’ brains. These intersensory links reflect the ways that a particular instrument converts action into sound, the ways that it coordinates tonal and physical space. Reactivated in various ways, these connections can influence instrumentalists’ listening, improvisation, and composition. To investigate these effects, the book engages both classical and popular styles, from Bach to electronic music, from Beethoven to the blues. It uses Lewinian transformational theory to model instrumental interfaces and to analyze patterns of body-instrument interaction. Though based in music theory and analysis, the book also draws on psychology, including cognitive neuroscience, and the phenomenological philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. Ultimately, it argues that music cognition is not simply embodied; it is also conditioned by musical technology.

The Mobile Device: A new folk instrument?

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Jones
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Device ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Sound Processing ◽  
The Core ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Live Electronic Music ◽  
Mobile Music ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
Consumer Devices

Barbara Ballard's ‘carry principle’ defines the core elements of the mobile experience: small, personal, communicative, multifunctional, battery operated and always connected (Ballard 2007: 71). These qualities have ensured that for many of us some form of mobile device has become indispensable. Developments in mobile computing have meant that consumer devices are capable of increasingly sophisticated sound processing, leading to the emergence of new forms of mobile music. If this music is looked on as a new sub-genre of folk music, we might be able to put it in the context of live electronic music-making. With this in mind, this article will ask whether the mobile device has the potential to be considered a new folk instrument.

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