daemon@bartok.Eng.Sun.COM (02/10/90)
Music-Research Digest Thu, 8 Feb 90 Volume 5 : Issue 12
Today's Topics:
answer to Mitchell Spector
IBM PC music editor software (2 msgs)
knowledge acquisition in music research
Problems distributing Music Research Digest
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Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 09:23:56 EST
From: laske@edu.bu.cs
Subject: answer to Mitchell Spector
To: music-research <music-research%uk.ac.oxford.prg@uk.ac.nsfnet-relay>
Feb 6, 90
Dear Mitchell Spector,
In answer to your inquiry in music research, let me say there
is some work on your topic, as witnessed by submissions to the annual
A.I. and Music Workshops (1988 St. Paul, 1989 Detroit, 1990 Stockholm).
Unfortunately, the proceedings of the 1988/89 workshops are out of
print, and will become available only next year in the form of Readings
in A.I. and Music.
Kemal Ebcioglu, <kemal@ibm.com> is probably most aware of
work on your topic.
Otto Laske
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Date: 5 Feb 90 23:57:08 GMT
From: Richard Reiner <rreiner%yunexus%ists%helios.physics.utoronto.ca%jarvis.csri.toronto.edu%cs.utexas.edu%samsung%@uk.ac.oxford.prg>
Subject: IBM PC music editor software
To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg
IBM PC software which is to a musical score as a text editor is to a
document wanted. No other capabilities (e.g. MIDI record or playback)
needed, just the ability to edit and print musical scores. Freeware
or shareware preferred. Anybody know of such a thing?
Thanks.
--
Richard J. Reiner rreiner@nexus.yorku.ca
BITNET: rreiner@yorkvm1.bitnet (also rreiner@vm1.yorku.ca)
--
Richard J. Reiner rreiner@nexus.yorku.ca
BITNET: rreiner@yorkvm1.bitnet (also rreiner@vm1.yorku.ca)
------------------------------
Date: 7 Feb 90 20:37:06 GMT
From: Randy Spangler <rspangle%jarthur%brutus.cs.uiuc.edu%zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu@edu.ohio-state.cis.tut>
Subject: IBM PC music editor software
To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg
In article <7272@yunexus.UUCP> rreiner@yunexus.UUCP (Richard Reiner) writes:
>IBM PC software which is to a musical score as a text editor is to a
>document wanted. No other capabilities (e.g. MIDI record or playback)
>needed, just the ability to edit and print musical scores. Freeware
>or shareware preferred. Anybody know of such a thing?
Well, you might try Music Studio by Activision. Oh, there's also some
player-piano type freeware on Simtel20, pd1:<msdos.music> I think. Of
course, without MIDI things are going to sound really pitiful...
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Randy Spangler | The less things change, the |
| rspangle@jarthur.claremont.edu | more they remain the same |
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Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 00:18:02 CST
From: "Eleanor J. Evans @ 462-5330" <evans@com.ti.csc.lvipl>
Subject: knowledge acquisition in music research
To: music-research@com.sun.eng.bartok
The Laske/Handelman/etc. discussion is getting very interesting ...
Mr. Laske - As a fellow practising knowledge engineer, I'm curious
about some of your comments on the KA process. Exactly how would
you go about investigating the compositional process(es)? Your
last posting was interesting, but did not give much detail on the
KA process itself.
You refer to modelling a composer's use of a composition tool by
inserting a KA module that records his activity - have I represented
your remarks correctly? What kinds of activity would that module
monitor? What kinds of conclusions would you draw from that activity?
How much expert involvement would you require (feedback loops, etc.)?
Additionally, by what reasoning would you conclude that a model of
activity using a computer-based composition tool was an accurate
reflection of the compositional process(es)? Most of the composition
aids about which I have read or heard are characterized as limiting
the creative parts of the process; their chief benefits coming from
easing the drudgery of annotating/filling in/etc. Am I behind the
times? Are there tools now that are integrated with the composer's
creative process?
Mr. Handelman - from the perspective of a working composer, you
remarked that compositional processes vary widely between individuals.
Do you see any similarities in approach? Do common tools lead people
to similar patterns? If you and a fellow composer tried to talk to
each other about how you work, would you be speaking the same language?
Do you see any resemblances between your compositional process and
that of a creator in any medium (composer, poet, artist, ...)?
Eleanor Evans
evans@lvipl.ti.com
------------------------------
Date: 6 Feb 90 19:41:47 GMT
From: Brad Rubenstein <bradr%bartok@com.sun>
Subject: Problems distributing Music Research Digest
To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg
It seems that the connection the posts the Music Research Digest from
my mailing list to comp.music has broken. I'm working on it.
All back issues (up to 5.11 as of today) are available from
archive-server@bartok.sun.com (or ...!sun!bartok!archive-server). This
is an automated server. Send a piece of mail containing the words
"help" or "index music" for details.
Brad
---Brad Rubenstein-----Sun Microsystems Inc.-----bradr@sun.com---
------------------------------
End of Music-Research Digesteliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) (02/10/90)
;Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 00:18:02 CST ;From: "Eleanor J. Evans @ 462-5330" <evans@com.ti.csc.lvipl> ;Subject: knowledge acquisition in music research ;To: music-research@com.sun.eng.bartok ;Mr. Handelman - from the perspective of a working composer, you ;remarked that compositional processes vary widely between individuals. ;Do you see any similarities in approach? Do common tools lead people ;to similar patterns? If you and a fellow composer tried to talk to ;each other about how you work, would you be speaking the same language? ;Do you see any resemblances between your compositional process and ;that of a creator in any medium (composer, poet, artist, ...)? ;Eleanor Evans ;evans@lvipl.ti.com Are there similarities in approach? Our musical practice emphasizes orginality rather than similarity. A piece is not good "because" it's similar to another piece. Consequently, composers tend to want to eradicate similarities, rather than encouraging them. And this desire works its way down to the very process of coming up with music in the first place. To give an example of how complex -- how unsuited for knowledge engineering -- the process can be, consider the following. Shostakovitch is said to have had a metal splinter in his right hemisphere -- an old war injury -- that had a starnge effect. When he leaned to the right he could simply hear music as though it were right there in the room with him. Penfield discussed cases where patients heard music -- their own memories, really -- as though a radio were blaring in the room, when an area of the cortex was probed. I myself have had similar experiences, though not quite as intense. In a light sleep, I sometimes can "hear" what I'm writing, in a way that is quite different from merely "imagining" music. Now I can jiggle and tweak this "heard" music pretty much as I like: I can decide to make (say) the horn section do something, and then hear it, virtually as though it is really there. The imagination mysteriously fills in all sorts of details. Unfortunately none of this is exactly voluntary. I probably have to be overworked in order to get into the mood, and it does have something to do with dreaming -- dreaming music, but with some sort of control over its flow. Now experiences such as these have been pretty influential for me, not exactly in the type of music I hear -- most of it's crap -- but in my thinking about what music is, and what it is that I want to make it do. Surprisingly, the result has been to move me away from "direct" composition, just writing down whatever it is that you hear -- that was the Nadia Boulanger approach, practiced by, say, Ned Rorem, and I don't like the kind of vague imagistic music that this approach results in. The approach, of course, determines the result, so I believe anyhow. What interests me in this, rather, is the way in which music becomes, in those moods, a very natural way to think -- it becomes a sort of alternative consciousness, in which thoughts, perceptions, everything, is music. This might sound mystical, but I think it's at the root of all musical experience -- in dance halls, concert halls to a lesser extent, but particularly whereever music is ritualistic and orgiastic -- this is not cognitive activity, but rather a form of alternative mental existence. If the music is good you become the music. The music has taken over, or is at least supplementing your inner existence. It's not something you're looking at, rather something you've become, to greater or lesser extent. Now my perspective is this. If any of this is true, as I bvelieve it is, then music is much more than a game with event cards, much more than the process of making pretty shapes. In some sense the direct concern of music is the supplementing of inner existence, or, as I like to say, the transmission of a secondary consciousness. Music, as I see it, should move towards the direct realization of that idea, without the interference of strictly intrinsic, historically motivated concerns. And this is what I'm working on (Ph.D. thesis, maybe 1990). I'm trying to show how certain (almost banal) compositional strategies can follow as a consequence of certain cognitive structures, simple models of sensation and consciousness can serve as "critics" for composition programs. What I'm aiming at is music -- preferably of great complexity, because I like music to be like that -- that is calculated strictly from the standpoint of the experience that it arouses in a given model: then the experience of music is the experience of that model, the built-in listener whose perspective the real listener may or may not be able to identify with, or may or may not want to. Ok, so that's how I compose. To quote myself: "what a composer does is to do crazy stuff." You can't talk about "expertise" because we're all moving arounbd in the shadows without really knowing what we're doing, often even what the point of it is. You can't talk about a "task domain" because if you're writing somebody else's music, one of your many teachers will say to you, "go find your own music to write." You have to find out for yourself what it is that you're supposed to be doing, and in recent times that's become increasingly hard to figure out. Nobody can teach composition for that reason. I mean, you can get kids to make up melodies and you can even teach them how to write them down. But I doubt that any of these kids will ever become composers. If you're just carrying out instrauctions you can never discover how to think musically, or that one can think musically. -Eliot Handelman Princeton U., Music