Computer Music

Transcript

• 00:00

  [MUSIC PLAYING]Electronic music of the past and present,by pioneers of the art.With a special eight concert series at New York's MoMA,Kraftwerk is proving it's still part of the avant garde.

• 00:21

  Kraftwerk does everything.That was a performance.There's the robots, the visuals just right, it's 3D.They do everything.They are like other artists, who havea very complex body of work.The German group began mixing music and technologyfor a future recent sound back in the 1970s.

• 00:42

  Each night in New York, they've come back to a different album.The synthesized tracks have influencedsome of music's biggest names.You don't necessarily recognize it, but it's there everywhere.You put on a Depeche Mode record, you put on a U2 record,it's there.You go to see a DJ act these days-- somehow what

• 01:07

  they did, integrating rhythms, and pop, and electronics,is there.They're a daily occurrence, whether you know it or not.[MUSIC PLAYING]Singer Ralph Hutter is the only original member left,but Kraftwerk's cult following hasn't waned.

• 01:29

  Tickets for the series sold out in just 60 minutes.Lots of computer sounds, lots of techno wonderfulness.Lights and robots.RadioactivityYeah.[MUSIC PLAYING]3D videos and a custom surround sound add a modern touch

• 01:52

  to the performances, but the songs are sounds of the past,taking fans back to the future.[MUSIC PLAYING]

Computer music is that in which computers mediate some or all part(s) of the creative process. Computers are used in musical creation both in real-time continuous modes (often in public presentation) and in private, temporally discontinuous modes, including composition, improvisation, and sound synthesis and sculpting. From another perspective, this range also comprises music with a representation, such as a score involving a discrete set of symbols for subsequent performance, and music that is produced directly as synthesized or recorded sound with no intermediate symbolic form. This perspective also relates quite closely to one that distinguishes note-based from sound-based music, regardless of issues of representation, where notes are at least analogous to individual performed instrumental tones (and so each is separable from its neighbors and accompaniments), whereas sound-based music may involve any number of continua in sound, as well as complex sounds with discontinuities. Computer music happily questions the assumptions on which the vocal and instrumental music of most cultures is based, and exploits numerous contrasting as well as shared features. Consequently, it provides unique challenges and opportunities for the understanding of music behavioral science in relation to music creation, performance, and perception.

Computers are also used in recording processes, although this is secondary to the creation of music. Music was also made on analog computers, and classic instruments such as the first Moog synthesizers were analog. The broader term electronic music encompasses both analog and digital synthesis, and John Cage included live electronics in his 1939 Imaginary Landscape No 1. However, the main psychological issues of interest in computer music have been generated in the era of digital computers (since around 1958). The pioneering Radiophonic Workshop of the British Broadcasting Corporation (and notably Daphne Oram) straddled the analog and digital approaches and eras in electronics in a way that was very influential on popular understanding of electronic music (for example, with the music to the television series Dr. Who). Psychological research using computer music as material has immense potential because of the capacity for ecologically valid (that is, musically consistent) manipulation of its features (something that cannot be achieved with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's music, for example), and because it is often unfamiliar, so that effects of deep enculturation can be minimized. However, as yet this potential has only been approached to a very limited degree.

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