Composers Forum is a daily web log that allows invited contemporary composers to share their thoughts and ideas on any topic that interests them--from the ethereal, like how new music gets created, music history, theory, performance, other composers, alive or dead, to the mundane, like getting works played and recorded and the joys of teaching. If you're a professional composer and would like to participate, send us an e-mail.


Regular Contributors


Adrienne Albert
Beth Anderson
Larry Bell
Galen H. Brown
Cary Boyce
Roger Bourland
Corey Dargel
Lawrence Dillon
Daniel Gilliam
Peter Gordon
Rodney Lister
Ian Moss
Tom Myron
Frank J. Oteri
Carlos R. Rivera
David Salvage
Stefano Savi Scarponi
Alex Shapiro
Naomi Stephan
David Toub
Judith Lang Zaimont

Composer Blogs@ Sequenza21.com

Lawrence Dillon
Elodie Lauten
Anthony Cornicello
Everette Minchew
Tom Myron

Alan Theisen
Corey Dargel



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Thursday, September 29, 2005
HAL: I am sorry, Dave. I am afraid.

PART ONE – IT’S ALIVE! (tip o’ the hat to Steve Layton)

Why are people so quick to dismiss electronic music as not “human?” Are acoustic instruments “human?” I listen to a lot of electronic music, and there is plenty of bad electronic music out there (especially at the Hotel Cadillac), but there is also plenty of great electronic music – music generated by humans via computers and electronic instruments. I sometimes worry that people who make proclamations about electronic music simply don’t have a wide range of experience with it. You wouldn’t base your opinion of the viola on only a few performers’ or composers’ use of it, would you? So if you’re doing that with electronic music, please stop (I'm not accusing anyone; I'm just saying...)

There is plenty of very dramatic, moving, sentimental, emotional, and heartbreaking electronic music out there, if that’s what is meant by “human.”

PART TWO – ELECTRONIC EVOLVES TO ACOUSTIC?

When composers first started using electronics, they’d utilize sounds that were completely foreign to many listeners. John Cage predicted that electronic sound-making would eventually be used primarily to replicate acoustic sounds. In some ways, it is sad that his prediction is panning out.

It goes without saying that creating sound electronically opens up possibilities that are not available with acoustic instruments. You can create new sounds from scratch. You can alter recorded acoustic sounds in thoroughly un-acoustic ways. You can adjust virtually any parameter of a sound with as high (or low) a degree of precision as you choose. I am interested in the differences between electronic and acoustic sounds. I appreciate and enjoy the inadequacy of the synthesized cello that doesn’t sound like a real cello. I hope there will always be a place for the triangle waves and oscillators and distortion generators and all of their robot cousins. I am not particularly looking forward to the electronic re-invention of acoustic instruments.



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