SIMULACIÓN ATAQUE DDoS

Music exists.

Howard Burrell, conversation with the author, 2005

The discussion of ‘sound’ in the preceding chapters became distinctly musical. The reverse will apply in this chapter, which will be concerned mainly with the aspects of ‘music’ that are relevant to technology- based music- making in the twenty- fi rst century. This will involve ignoring or forgetting many musical ‘givens’. Howard Burrell’s comment serves as a reminder that, however much we may talk about sound, and to whatever extent we may use digital technologies, there always exists a vast body of music created in another way and at another time. This body of work casts a large shadow. A knowledge and understanding of past music will always benefi t any musician, including a digital musician. Burrell’s remark should be held as a warning to anyone who thinks that digital music renders all past endeavour obsolete and somehow negates the concept of music as it has been known. It will always have something to teach us.

The composer

The biggest change in music in the past thirty years or so has been in the role of the composer. To be the originator in Western classical music traditionally implies a hierarchy and one that is consolidated by copyright laws. This hier-archy is based on the idea that the composer is a fi gure of ultimate authority, underpinned by an assumption that the composer’s ears are somehow better than those of a musician. The new technologies have somewhat challenged this hier-archy. First, they have placed all the tools for composing within reach: it is easy to create music. Second, they have enabled a degree of interaction with the music that can blur the distinction between the originator and the consumer.

People can instantly remix, mash up, or otherwise recreate music. Third, they have transformed the act of performance into (potentially) an act of composi-tion. People can record as they perform and make identical copies, which never degrade in quality. The separation that has grown up between composers and

musicians is breaking down. The musician may be as much of an originator as the composer. In certain circumstances, the audience can become the originator.

Compare, for example, a violinist in an orchestra with a musician performing with a laptop computer. The violinist routinely copies the actions of his or her neighbour, following a precomposed score. The performance is essentially rep-etitious, and the function of an individual violin is to add to a collective sound produced by the whole violin section. The laptop musician, on the other hand, generally performs independently, relating to other musicians through choice.

There is often no precomposed score, although there may be some plan, or some written notes. There is room for individual creativity in the laptop musician’s performance.

In the case of the violinist, the composer is a remote fi gure (usually so remote as to be dead) and in any case mediated by the conductor. In the case of the laptop musician, the composer is probably the musician him or herself. If not, then there is often a living artist on hand to consult. There is not much distinc-tion here between the act of composidistinc-tion and the act of performance.

The performance aspects of fi xed medium works (tape, CD, etc.) are gener-ally fairly irrelevant, except where there is live diffusion. But the nature of the medium implies a removal of the barrier of the performance ritual itself, so that the originator speaks directly to the consumer, because the originator is the musi-cian. The traditional distinctions have, once again, broken down.

For many artists, the word ‘composer’ itself is problematic, conjuring up an image of a lone heroic genius or some historical character in a powdered wig.

These artists do not call what they do ‘composition’, yet they are engaged in an activity which would undoubtedly be classed as such by most experts in the fi eld, and they do it often with excellent results. The same issue arises in the case of sound designers and sonic artists, where the resistance to any kind of musical over-tone to what is being done leads to a kind of horror at the idea of being classed as a ‘composer’. The ‘dots’ composers, writing in the traditional way, would probably agree with that distinction. But the evidence tends to contradict them both.

‘Composition’ means, simply and literally, putting things together. The word crops up in contexts other than music, of course, including science, literature, even chess.¹ A musical composer, then, is simply someone who puts sounds together. The more conventional idea that a composer must write music nota-tion and that others should be able to reproduce a given work in performance does not go far enough to cover electro- acoustic music, for example. To stretch the point, an improvising performer is also engaged in acts of instant compo-sition. The education system complicates things further, by insisting that all students of both ‘music’ and ‘music technology’ engage in something called ‘com-position’ which involves the origination of music. Today’s musician is, to a great extent, a product of these developments. The digital musician is a composer.

Now, there is no reason to insist on someone who creatively puts sounds together using technology being called a ‘composer’ if neither the sonic artists (or whatever we call them) nor the ‘real’ composers want that. Except that, and Creating music 99

it is a big point, there is a reason why traditional composers have evolved in the way they have: they understand composition. At the very least, the composers have something to teach the rest of us about composition. The study of exist-ing music will always repay with dividends the effort expended, even if the music comes from a tradition that seems completely alien.

The major point here is that there is a blurring of roles in recent making and that a vastly increased number of people are today undertaking an activity that involves originating or combining sounds, often with musical inten-tion or result. For the digital musician, engaged in such activity, developing a knowledge and understanding of composition may be regarded as highly benefi -cial, if not essential.

So, composition involves putting together sonic content so that it takes on some form or other. The new technologies make this easy, but the fact that it can be done does not mean it should be done. There has to be a reason to compose, especially if the composition is to be good. There has to be an intention behind the result. And the composer has to be able to judge the result when measured against the intention. The question now is no longer whether we can compose, nor even what to compose, but why compose?

Why compose?

One approach to this question is fi rst to identify the purpose of the music, or (to answer a question with a question) what is the music for? We are no longer under the illusion that there is an objective purpose that can be ascribed to music, other than that which we ascribe. What are some of those purposes? If the brief is commercial, then more often than not the function of the music will be clearly defi ned (usually by someone else). However, not all music is commercial music.

In fact, some would- be commercial music can turn out not to be commercial, and vice versa! But the purposes of music can extend far beyond the question of a commercial brief. Here are some musings on the question: what is music for?

• To explore and expand human experience.

• To awaken sensitivity to the divine.

• To mark something out as special.

• To facilitate social bonding.

• To exercise the choice of being creative.

• To extol, support, encourage.

• To provide therapy.

• To engage in a battle for supreme intellectual achievement.

• To evolve the human race and its social systems.

• To provoke questioning of the existing social order.

• To enact freedom.

• To calm the mind.

• To provide emotional catharsis.

10 0 Creating music

• To encourage people to shop.

• To encourage people to march, celebrate, worship, kill . . .

• To encourage bodily health.

• To avoid thought.

• To seek answers to questions.

• To better understand oneself.

• To demonstrate to others how great you are.

• To pursue a fascination.

• To preserve a sonic environment.

• To tell stories.

• To avoid telling stories.

• To pass the time.

• To make a statement about self and/or group identity.

• To irritate the neighbours.

• To give theorists something to talk about.

• To make one feel [fi ll in blank].

• To experience pleasure or provide pleasure.

• ‘Inner necessity’.

• Just because . . .²

What each of these has in common is an assumption that music is active, that it has a capacity to do or say something. In every sense, the music has an effect or a voice and, for many people, music has a meaning.

Academic discussions often focus upon an ancient debate about musical meaning. One camp argues that music resembles a language, with clear grammar and syntax and that, therefore, it is possible to ascribe meanings to, and even tell stories in, sound. The opposing camp argues that, in fact, music is ‘absolute’, that is to say, it has no meaning over and above the sounds that you hear and, as the composer Stravinsky famously, and provocatively, said: ‘is incapable of expressing anything but itself’.³ The debate becomes particularly heated when the subject of the way in which music expresses emotions arises.

Most people would agree that music can express, or at least seem to express, emotions. However, there is general disagreement about what those emotions may be in a particular case. Listeners’ emotional states vary, and the responses they make also vary. A piece that seems sad to one audience may be amusing to another. There is nothing inherently in the music that makes this so, but, then again, without the music there would presumably be no such feeling at all.

Creating music 101

This has implications for the composer or musician. Let’s suppose you feel angry, and you want to create some music to express that anger. First, it is hard to create music when gripped by a powerful emotion such as anger. When you try it, the emotion itself gets in the way of the rational thought needed to organ-ise materials and equipment, to structure and give form to the music. You may know what it is to feel anger, but what you want to do is to create some music that evokes that feeling. That is a very different statement, but it will probably be far more successful as an approach to achieving the expressive goal.

You may start to draw upon music’s evocative power by exploring the ways in which anger may be expressed musically in your culture. At fi rst, perhaps, you might think of loud, clashing, jarring material, which seems to draw a direct par-allel with the emotion you felt. A more subtle approach might in fact avoid the obviously loud, clashing music in favour of a more ‘internalised’, ‘tense’, almost psychological evocation of anger. Whatever solution you adopt, the sheer com-positional craft involved will tend to make the musical depiction of anger distanced, refl ective. In other words, the expression of emotion in music is to a certain extent a matter of technique. This does not necessarily mean it lacks feeling, or is in some way ‘cold and calculated’.

Musical expression depends a great deal upon context. To take some material that is ‘sad’ and place it in some new context it does not necessarily mean that the quality of sadness will also have transferred to the new situation. Since a great deal of contemporary music uses such recontextualisation, it is important to understand that any material, in any context, will have a relationship with its new context and its old context. The listeners’ perceptions of this relationship will depend partly upon their knowledge of the two contexts and partly upon their abilities to deduce from the aural evidence. The fact that a composer knows both the origins and the destinations of recontextualised material does not guar-antee that the listeners will share that understanding.

This can be extended to the question of intention and result. It is an unfortu-nate fact that whatever meanings you intend to communicate with your sounds, there is no guarantee that the listener will actually understand. Some recent research conducted by Robert Weale into the intention and reception of elec-tro- acoustic music⁴ tests this idea by playing various groups of listeners pieces of music with and without titles and additional information. Although there was some convergence in reaction, there were also differences in audience understanding even when they had access to the composer’s intentions. Music as expression, then, seems, at best, an inaccurate weapon.

Despite this, the creation of music fulfi ls a need for such expression, and it is no accident that certain composers and musicians seem to communicate their ideas better than others. In some cases, this happens in spite of the composer. Stravin-sky remarked, ‘I was the vessel through which Le Sacre du Printemps passed’. On other occasions, the emotional involvement of the composer in his or her own music seems integral to its success (Beethoven is an obvious example).

There is no single answer to the question ‘Why compose?’ Each person should 102 Creating music

fi nd his or her own reasons. There are plenty of reasons why not to compose, of which the most pressing is the sheer quantity of existing music. And yet, the desire to fi nd a voice as an artist is so strong that many people feel impelled to do so. The wonderful thing about the new technologies is that they have enabled so many to produce good results and often with relatively little formal musical training or in unusual circumstances.

● Inspiration box

■ Miranda, E. R. (2001) Composing Music with Computers. Oxford: Focal Press.

■ Weintraub, L. et al. (1997) Art on the Edge and Over: Searching for Art’s Meaning in Con-temporary Society 1970s–1990s. New York: Art Insights.

Aural imagination

It is interesting to note how much the preceding discussion of musical meaning relates to the earlier discussion of Pierre Schaeffer’s four modes of listening. The deeper understanding of the evocation of emotion, for example, corresponds to the deeper level of listening in modes 3 and 4, which relate to discrimination and understanding. The extent to which the musician succeeds in understanding the way in which music’s evocative power may be harnessed is often the mark of a sophisticated and successful musical listener.

The emergence of an aural culture, working directly with sound itself, has certain consequences. One advantage of the notation- based system was that it forced composers in particular, but also musicians in general, to develop an aural imagination, often referred to as the ‘inner ear’. This is the ability to hear accu-rately in the imagination, without reference to any actual sound. Often, this skill would be combined with score- reading, such that a skilled conductor, for exam-ple, would be able to ‘read’ a score off the page, hearing the music with the inner ear in the same way that one might read a book without speaking (or hearing spoken) the words.

The aural imagination has great creative potential, allowing musical forms and structures to be shaped by the individual before committing them to actual sound. It can also operate simultaneously with music- making, allowing the musi-cian to imagine other ways to develop or manipulate the material as they do so.

It is a means of experimentation, of creative play. It is, therefore, important to try to retain this as part of the ‘hands- on’, concrete, sculptural way of working encouraged by the new technologies.

Sculpture provides an interesting parallel to illustrate the role of the aural imagination. A sculptor may begin by seeing a pattern in nature or by observ-ing an aspect of human existence. Or they may set out to make a reproduction of an existing object. Whatever their purpose, sculptors will often use their materi-als to make something that resembles their imagination. In doing so, they might reveal to the rest of us something not seen before, some truth. More often than Creating music 103

not, there will be a single material, such as stone or wood. Sometimes, what is revealed is the inherent properties of the material itself, which nevertheless once again connects with the imagination: within this we might fi nd this . . .

Sound and sonic exploration may be treated in very much the same way.

The advantage of working in digital media is that the results can be constantly reviewed and repeated, just like a sculpture. In both cases, the role of the cre-ator’s imagination is crucial to the fi nished result. In the creation of any work, there is a three- stage process: the intention to create; the result of the act of cre-ation; and the reception of the fi nished result. The imagination is relevant in all three stages but is most active in the gap between intention and result. It could be said that this is where the art resides.

● Sunset

■ Godøy, R. I. and Jørgensen, H. (eds) (2001) Musical Imagery. Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger.

■ McAdams, S. (ed.) (1993) Thinking in Sound. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

■ Théberge, P. (1997) Any Sound You Can Imagine. Hanover, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Intention and result

The criteria for judging the success of a piece may rest with a client or an audi-ence, depending on the circumstances. For the artists themselves, however, the mapping of intention to result, coupled with a critical distance on the work, will be the main way such judgements are made. The ability to self- evaluate, to criti-cise one’s own compositional work, is an important skill. There may be situations where indifference to the outcome of the work is part of the creative project itself, but this kind of situation needs considerable conceptual and artistic matu-rity to succeed. In general, the composer or artist will have some idea of what they want to achieve and some sense of whether they have achieved it.

Even in a situation where the computer is the composer, or an algorithm has been created which follows its own course regardless of human intervention, the initial intention to create such a musical situation must be there. The key to making good critical evaluations of one’s own work lies in the ability to adapt mentally to the nature of the work itself. In other words, it is no good condemn-ing an algorithmic piece for showcondemn-ing a lack of freedom from constraints or an improvisation for lacking suffi cient pre- planning, any more than it is fair to

Even in a situation where the computer is the composer, or an algorithm has been created which follows its own course regardless of human intervention, the initial intention to create such a musical situation must be there. The key to making good critical evaluations of one’s own work lies in the ability to adapt mentally to the nature of the work itself. In other words, it is no good condemn-ing an algorithmic piece for showcondemn-ing a lack of freedom from constraints or an improvisation for lacking suffi cient pre- planning, any more than it is fair to