# The Computer as Musician



## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Computers have been used in music for over half a century now, from RCA's room-filling monstrosities to the Synclavier's tapeless studio and finally the common PC, yet, even with steadily growing acceptance in both "serious" and popular music, there remains a cumbersome taboo against these complex and awesome machines and the artists who use them. Consider the bedroom hip-hop producer: sat on their bed, hunched over a laptop, Beats by Dr Dre plastered to one ear in goofy approximation of the Hollywood record company exec, ctrl+v'ing ad nauseam the same block of MIDI data across a vast stretch of FL Studio sequencer space, selling for £5 apiece the fruits of their non-labour. This largely invented reality suits with uncanny convenience the view of a great many people who simply refuse to believe that effort ever should or even could be expended in the production of the dreaded, filthy, depraved and seriously unhealthy computer music.

"Computer music." Let's think about that term for a moment. What does it mean, exactly? There are a handful of artificially intelligent composers operating at the time of writing, each of them developing their own musical environments through action and reaction based on algorithms. Unlike chess, where this algorithmic approach has resulted in many grandmaster level AIs, music composition is an essentially free process, there are no rules in any given piece which the composer has not chosen for themselves or at least agreed to follow, but the AI composer has no choice, their rules are chosen for them and they comply only because they have as little control over their material as over the specifications of their hardware. That is computer music: an interdisciplinary study combining artificial intelligence and music composition, where the musical output is the product of prescribed formulae within a highly limited mathematical framework. However, what is most commonly meant by "computer music" is the composition or production of music using the MIDI system, usually through a (semi-)dedicated frontend like the aforementioned FL Studio, Steinberg Cubase, Propellerhead Reason, their ancestor MUSIC (Max Matthews, Bell Labs) etc. and that the composer is a slave to this system, being afforded only slightly more control than I entertained of our artificial counterparts. This is not the truth of MIDI, as I will discuss below, but for now let's clear up the nomenclature a little: rather than "computer music," I call what I do "computer rendered composition," not the catchiest of phrases in the terminology book, but preferable at least to having one's work lumped in with the output of the Iamus cluster.

In computer rendered composition, the composer takes on simultaneously the responsibility of conductor, that is to say they write the music and shape the performance at the same time. This is something of an alien concept even to people who work largely with computers in lieu of a Mendelssohnian personal orchestra to torture with every half-realised, overly ambitious and ham-fisted sonic nightmare that pops into their head; they haven't yet become aware that they are writing for a different breed of musician, one that does exactly what it is told, necessitating a different approach to composition. This oblivion state manifests itself in the form of many interesting and generally deplorable phenomena, popular examples include the teenager who doesn't know, doesn't care, dreams of being the next John Williams and is armed with oh-so-_cinematic_ "hit the button and watch it go" tools like Symphobia, and also the _serious_ composer labouring over some dreadful ersatz Mozart in Finale. The latter example brings to mind a quote from Samuel Beckett's _Waiting for Godot_: "there's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet." I am of course referring to the oft made excuse "it's the MIDI rendering, not me" which is forthcoming when the composer is confronted with criticisms of the dreaded "sounds like a metronome" or indeed any other variety, yet this will always be the fault of the composer for not realising the extra responsibilities involved in seeing a computer rendered piece to its conclusion.

The hordes of reactionary music students who want to go back in time a few hundred years while remaining exactly when they are, do not get along well with computers, which for them are relegated to the lowly position of scorewriter, and there is understandably an annoyance approaching and sometimes exceeding rage at these damnable machines that play everything metronomically as if music were a kind of temporal marksmanship. We play for peace and harmony, man, the piano is not a machine gun. But the computer's just following orders, brother, and getting your mood ring back to a mellow yellow is as simple as issuing the right orders in the right way. Severely clumsy references to the good old days in which I never lived aside, MIDI is a rich language of near infinite potential for use in music creation, whether on its own or in an augmented unit with acoustic and electric instruments and, perhaps best of all, requires no thousand page densely worded textbooks or years of tutelage to learn. Anti-intellectual? Perhaps, but then what exactly is intellectual about music in the first place? At some point one has to confront the fact that music is the most open of all art forms, where the intellectual aspects are optional at best, and the potential for intuitive development is limitless. Of course, there are many theoretical systems for the organisation of all aspects of music to which the composer can choose to adhere, and collected into the field of music theory they offer up a grand academic pursuit for many scholars, but these are far from the be all and end all of musical thought no matter if one is taking pen to paper or mouse pointer to sequencer.

The main goal of this short essay has been to encourage you, no matter what kind of music you make or might be interested in making, to explore the potential of computer technology in your work, to embrace its vastness of application regardless of past experiences, prejudices and misconceptions, and perhaps most importantly to avoid viewing the world of music as one of clichés and binary extremes. At no point would I suggest computer rendered composition as the singularity to which all musical progress leads, nor that anyone should believe they must necessarily go to it. The dogma of Darmstadt is long done and dusted, the composer finally free to pursue their interests without ideological persecution, yet it is only through exploration of ideas, both those that inspire enthusiasm and those that inspire reticence, that we develop and grow as composers. I believe the computer musician needs more advocates, and that maybe, just maybe, you can help it out. So, if you're reading this, please spare a thought for the metal box humming away to itself atop your desk, it's good for more than just checking your e-mail and watching YouTube.

FURTHER LISTENING
_This is not intended to be a comprehensive or objective list. All selections are either fully or largely computer rendered, or feature a significant computer rendered element. In square brackets I have noted the technology and/or facility used._

Milton Babbitt - Occasional Variations (1971) [RCA Mark II, Princeton EMC]
Pierre Boulez - ...explosante-fixe... (1993) [MIDI, IRCAM]*
Hans Edler - Elektron Kukéso (1971) [Elektronmusikstudio Stockholm]**
Jonathan Harvey - Mortuos Plango Vivos Voco (1980) [MUSIC-N, IRCAM]
Charles Wuorinen - Time's Encomium (1969) [RCA Mark II, Princeton EMC]
Frank Zappa - Civilization Phaze III (1993) [Synclavier, UMRK]

Note: I use the terms "serious music" and "popular music" only for the purpose of distinction between what I feel are the two supergeneric schools of thought in our time.

*MIDI rendered flute plus acoustic instruments
**Made using a computer which was full of bugs and produced unpredictable results. This was supposed to be a hit pop record but ended up being something quite different.


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