| this land is your land spring 2002 | ||
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Notes on computer composition. I was reading an essay "Electricity, a musical liberator" in which Joseph Schillinger says: "The growth of musical art in any age is determined by the technological progress which parallels it. Neither the composer nor the performer can transcend the limits of the instruments of the time. Although it is true that musicians may have ideas which hurdle these technical barriers, yet, being forced to use existing instruments, their intentions remain unrealized until scientific progress comes to rescue" After reading this, I became very sad. My drive to work with sound is that machines can be used to tell my story. The composer cannot transcend the limits of technology? An orchestral score is mechanically perfect "it sounds mechanical" as Leopold Stokowski said. "It won't have the human element", because daily human emotions and complex thoughts can not be scored. The computer, I thought, would bypass the limitations of written music, because I could record, assemble, generate, and transform all the sounds and silence I had around me. Therefore I could talk about, analyze, share, feel, and express all these sounds from my daily life. I could establish a dialogue, form connections and set up contrasts using all the sounds around me. If the sounds are infinite and the infinite sounds can be composed inside the computer, then the computer has something of infinity inside as well. There is something sublime about a computer, but it has fatal flaws. Computers can juggle data in a nearly infinite variety, but one or two wrong moves, and the thing is a plastic shell useless except as a doorstop. "Creativity comes when humans try to understand what they cannot understand, do what they cannot do." This statement is great, and could make me less gloomy about learning computer limitations, but it also could be used to defend formalism, that sad state occurring when the artist has mastered their medium, but never had anything to express in the first place. I hope I can get beyond the programs. a. salinas This Land is Your Land aaland@luckykitchen.com Spain 2002
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