Which tools for which creation. Lecture at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, December 13th 2011

1. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.1
Composition and Computers today
Which tools for which creation
Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, December 13th 2011
Nicola Bernardini
Conservatorio “C.Pollini”
Padova
Copyright ©2011 Nicola Bernardini <nicb@sme-ccppd.org>
This work comes under the terms of the Creative Commons BY-SA 2.5 license

2. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.2
However much the growth of the
orchestra has been the toy of
circumstances, conditions, or the
mechanical or technical
development of instruments, the
real driving force behind such
evolution is after all the insistently
growing demand of musical art for
fit means of expression.
Adam Carse,
The History of Orchestration,
p.7 (1925)

3. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.3
Yesterday and today
• When computers were scarcely available, there were
hardly any “digital tools” for music
• Composers had to go out of their way with their
imagination to produce music with them
• Their imagination was constantly stimulated by the
difficulties and the limitations
• Today, computers are a general commodity
• They are used for music as for anything else. . .
• . . . and composers have many pre–fabricated tools to work
with (as everybody else as a matter of fact, both musicians
and non musicians)
• The question is: do these tools help imagination and
creativity on the musical side?

4. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.4
Tools Usage (1)
• Tools are essential to creation
• Their function is to lower the complexity barrier
• Past:
highly structured languages. . .
. . . simple interface structures

5. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.5
Tools Usage (2)
• Present:
weak languages. . .
. . . complex tools
• Are tools taking over creation?

6. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.6
Digital Tools
• Digital hardware is a large matrix of switches:
• Unlimited potential. . .
• . . . almost infinite complexity
• Software restricts potentials. . .
• . . . but it allows humans to deal with complexity

7. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.7
Tools Transparency (1)
• Generally speaking, tools are an extension of human
capabilities
• Digital tools provide extensions to mind capabilities
• Tools Transparency is the ability of doing exactly what you
have in mind using tools that lower the complexity barrier
you are facing

8. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.8
Tools Transparency (2)

9. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.9
Tools Transparency (3)
• Very roughly:
• The height of the complexity barrier is directly proportional
to the versatileness of the tool
• i.e.: a versatile tool is more complicate to learn and use,
and you will reach the complexity barrier sooner. . .
• . . . but a tool that automates many things for you will most
probably automate decisions for you too
• There is no silver bullet :(
• Perhaps a solution lies in getting to learn as many tools as
possible, using the (most) appropriate one for each task

10. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.10
Special Tools vs. General Tools (1)
highlow
Generality
lowhigh
Complexity
Sound Editors:
(cooledit, sound designer,
soundforge, audacity, etc.)
HDRs:
(ProTools, Cubase,
Ardour, etc.)
Score Editors:
(Finale, Sibelius,
Lilypond, CMN, etc.) Fast−prototyping
Environments:
(pd, Max−MSP, jMax, etc.)
Music Languages
(csound, SuperCollider,
nyquist, CM, etc.)
Small Languages:
(awk, perl, python, etc.)
System Languages:
(C, C++, Java, etc.)
Helpers
Plug−ins

11. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.11
Special Tools vs. General Tools (2)
• Transparency at all costs is seldom necessary
• However we should be wary of tools that “open up new
possibilities”
• We often need to step from one tool to the other in the
creation of a complex work

12. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.12
A Musical Example (1)
• Recordare - Madrigale Recitato per Suoni Elaborati
(1999-2000)
• Designed in 1995
• Got around to write it in 1999
• Took a couple of years of work (on and off)

13. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.13
A Musical Example (2)
• Basic (abstract) Ideas:
• A speaking choir of ghosts
• Choir of individual voices representing entire communities
• Walking frontally towards the audience
• An elaboration on roughness

14. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.14
A Musical Example (3)
• Technical Construction Ideas:
• Collect recordings of the text by close friends and relatives
of both sexes and ages
• Segment recordings by dyphones or syllables
• Reconstruct the text mixing syllables and/or dyphones
according to statistical rules
• Render spatially the reconstructed text(s) using simple
sound–tracing techniques

15. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.15
A Musical Example (4)
• Tools:
• csound processing engine
• transcriber (helped by awk and perl scripts) to
segment the text in the recordings
• awk and perl scripts to create csound scores and tables
• A short excerpt

16. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.16
Another musical example (1)
• Passacaglia, for flute and multi–track fixed media, by Aldo
Clementi
• conceived by Clementi in 1988
• first fixed media version premièred in 1996
• new fixed media version premièred in 2010

17. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.17
Another musical example (2)
• fixed media content:
• 12 fragments taken from the classical flute repertoire
• a matrix of 12 × 12 × 4 = 576 fragments extrapolated from
the initial fragments
• fragment rotations and superpositions
• 48 real voices independently moved in space on an
8–channel system
• many other problems:
• musical materials to be built in order to record the fragments
• figuring out if everything is done according to plan (charting)

18. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.18
Another musical example (3)
Figure: Passacaglia, first page of fragments (manuscript by Aldo
Clementi)

19. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.19
Another musical example (4)
Figure: Passacaglia, schema (manuscript by Aldo Clementi)

20. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.20
Another musical example (5)
Passacaglia - Schema A - Riga S3
Aldo Clementi
$Revision: 18 $
Partitura di realizzazione
1211
Flauto
Contralto
in Sol
13
S3
4 5 6 7
= 110
1 2 3 108 9
5 6 11 134
M3
2
7
= 104
1 3 82 9 1210
105 116
B3
3
12321
= 98
984 7 13
6
= 92
985
S2
4
131073 12111 2 4
4 129 13
M2
5
6 85 71 103 112
= 87
8 93 7 10
B2
6
1342 11 1265
= 82
1
Figure: Passacaglia, automatically generated materials (example)

21. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.21
Another musical example (6)
Figure: Passacaglia, automatically generated database dump

22. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.22
Another musical example (7)
Figure: Passacaglia, automatically generated schema

23. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.23
Another musical example (8)
• when Clementi conceived it (1988), nobody knew how to
handle this piece
• first version (1996):
• awk + shell preprocessor scripts
• materials generated by hand
• csound generation, static multitrack output (8–tracks)
• sound movement in space done by specialized hardware
• second version (2010):
• ruby scripting
• materials (and everything else) generated automatically
through lilypond and latex
• csound generation, fully independent voices
• sound output already spatialized

24. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.24
Conclusions
• Digital creation goes hand in hand with a wide availability
of different tools. . .
• . . . which must be customizable and/or modifiable at will. . .
• . . . and whose input/outputs must be join-able together.
• in such situations, proprietary, closed, one–size–fits–all
software simply won’t do.
• In the digital world, the imagination is strictly connected to
(the creation and) use of appropriate tools – which may
not have been conceived for the specific task at hand.

25. Composition and
Computers today
Nicola Bernardini
Introduction
Tools
Digital Tools
Transparency
Special vs. General
Examples
Recordare
Passacaglia
Conclusions
1.25
THE END.
Thank you.