On 12/1/01 1:56 PM, "David M. McLean" <sd-musiclab@home.com> wrote:
>
> Specifically, I'm interested in if extropians view the dominant advances
> in music's immediate evolution as coming from theoretical models (much
> the way composers like Schoenberg and others radicalized the "serious
> music" world during the turn of the last century) or from technological
> advances (much the way Ray Kurzweil's K-250 and digital recording
> breakthroughs did at the end of the last century). Or will it possibly
> be a "hard" combination of the two (like the "chaos" composition
> generators & granular synths of today)?
My personal opinion is that at this point improvements in technology have
very little impact on what is possible musically. I think people are
extremely hard pressed to do anything "new" in the sound department, and
what can be aesthetically constructed is a very tiny subset of the space of
possibilities in any given context. I guess what I am saying is that
regardless of the construction process, the results are unlikely to be
"new".
With specific regard to chaotic and granular synthesis, I don't think these
will ever be anything other than a minor curiosity for two reasons. First,
it is intrinsically difficult for the artist to control the sound with these
methods, which makes for a very poor canvas for the artist to express
themselves. Second, the entire spectrum of textures and sounds can be
created using synthesis methods that are far more artist friendly (i.e.
sample playback, subtractive, additive, frequency modulation, wave table,
phase distortion, physical modeling, vector, etc and any combination thereof
with a healthy dose of modulation routings for good measure). The advent of
"Swiss Army Knife" DSP based semi-modular synthesis systems allow sound
designers to pretty much get any result they want using some combination of
"artist friendly" synthesis algorithms. Granular synthesis is interesting,
but most useful results it generates could have been generated by other
forms of synthesis with a lot less effort and far more control.
Of course, this is just my opinion.
Cheers,
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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