The Electronic Century Part IV: The Seeds of the Future

May 1, 2000 12:00 PM, Joel Chadabe

SOFTWARE BEGINNINGS

A MIDI software industry had already emerged in the mid-'80s. For example, Opcode Systems established itself in 1984 with a MIDI sequencer for the Macintosh and almost immediately expanded its product line to include David Zicarelli's DX7 patch editor. At the same time, other companies were forming and releasing similar software, among them Steinberg Research in Hamburg, Germany, and Mark of the Unicorn in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

As personal computers got faster and less expensive and computer-based MIDI sequencers became more commonplace, other MIDI software applications were developed. In 1985, Laurie Spiegel wrote Music Mouse, a program that contained harmony-generating algorithms. In 1986, Zicarelli developed two applications, M and Jam Factory, for Intelligent Music, which continued to develop other interactive-composing programs during the years that followed. Of particular interest was M, an interface of musical icons that controlled algorithms (see Fig. 3). Given a melody or other input, a composer could use M to generate an infinite stream of rhythmic and melodic variations, ending with something distinct and original. For example, I composed After Some Songs, a group of short improvisational compositions for electronics and percussion, by using M to transform some favorite jazz standards.

In 1985, Miller Puckette went to IRCAM to develop software for the 4X, a digital synthesizer built by Giuseppe di Giugno. By mid-1988, Puckette had developed a graphical modular control language that he called Max. At about the same time, Zicarelli saw a demonstration of Max and, after discussing it with Puckette, developed the language as a commercial product-first with Intelligent Music and then, after Intelligent changed directions in 1990, with Opcode Systems. Max was released in late 1990 and remains an essential tool for many customized music software applications.

The first digital audio programs were also developed in the mid-'80s. Among them were MacMix, written by Adrian Freed in 1985, and Sound Designer, a Digidesign product released the same year. In 1986, working in conjunction with a company called Integrated Media Systems, Freed added a specialized hardware device and called the system Dyaxis. And in 1988, taking advantage of increasing computer speeds, larger hard drives, and digital-to-analog converters, Digidesign released Sound Tools, which established an industry standard in audio editing. Digital audio was fast becoming accessible to musicians.

TRENDS INTO THE '90S

Everything expanded throughout the 1990s. The market filled with increasingly sophisticated synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, effects generators, and an enormous variety of modules, each of them doing something different and offering unique sonic possibilities. A large secondary market of patch panels and other MIDI-management gear formed around the needs of professionals with racks of devices. Software applications, including sequencers, patch editors, effects processors, and hard disk recording systems, also permeated the market. In fact, there was so much to learn that the following joke was frequently heard: "What's a band?" "Three guys reading a manual."

Some musicians may have felt a few pangs of nostalgia for analog equipment and sounds, but the 1990s were largely a digital decade driven by the availability of ever-faster microprocessors. Not surprisingly, as personal computers kept getting speedier and more powerful, digital audio became increasingly software based.

But the advances of the 1990s reach far beyond simply editing sound. Digital signal processing (DSP), which allows composers to transform as well as synthesize sounds, became an important component in digital audio systems. One of the most complete DSP applications to appear in the late '90s was MSP, created by Miller Puckette and David Zicarelli and marketed through Cycling '74, a company that Zicarelli formed in 1997 to develop DSP software as well as to make M available again.

Among the pioneers in DSP systems for composers is Carla Scaletti. In 1986, she began creating a software synthesis system that she called Kyma (Greek for wave). By the following year she had extended Kyma to include the Platypus, a hardware audio accelerator built by Kurt Hebel and Lippold Haken that sat alongside a Macintosh, received instructions, and generated sound (see Fig. 4). Scaletti's 1987 composition sunSurgeAutomata demonstrates the sound-processing and algorithmic abilities of the Platypus. By 1990, Scaletti and Hebel had upgraded the hardware to a system called the Capybara. In 1991, they formed Symbolic Sound Corporation and shipped the first complete Kyma system, available initially for the Mac and shortly thereafter for the PC. With its evolving hardware and continual upgrades, Kyma remains one of the most powerful sound-design systems available today.

INTO THE 21ST CENTURY

As we look to the future, it's hard to know which innovations will have the greatest impact on our lives and our work. Although we can assume that digital audio technology will keep improving as computing horsepower increases and prices drop, predicting exactly how this will play out in our studios isn't easy. I asked several leading figures in the music-technology field for their thoughts on what the next decades will bring. Here are some of their predictions:

Craig Harris (composer, author, and executive editor of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac): "New instruments will have enormous flexibility in both the sonic realm and the modes of interaction, such that composers can create in the way that is most effective for them, performers can realize works in ways that work best for their own personal styles, and audience members can benefit from a rich variety of interpretations. This is one realm that distinguishes electronic instruments from traditional instruments, in that there is no preconceived sonic realm or method for interaction that is inherent in the machine. For the first time, we have instruments that will have their limits established more by our imaginations than by the laws of acoustics."

Carla Scaletti (composer, software developer, and president of Symbolic Sound Corporation): "What seems to interest us is the process of making music. Bootlegs of tour improvisations on original album material are more sought after than the finished albums. Some musicians are beginning to post MP3 versions of `works in progress' on the Internet, so all of us can witness and participate in the process of exploration and refinement that goes into a `finished' album. Every album that is released immediately spawns multiple offspring in the form of remixes. Interactive and immersive environments like computer games require music that can be `traversed' in a multiplicity of ways; each path through the game results in a new piece of music. The 21st century will be `the composition century' where `objects' (like finished albums) will be virtually free on the Internet, while the creators of those objects will be highly sought after."

Daniel Teruggi (composer and director of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris): "If we put our analytical ears on, we see that there is still a great difference between a recorded sound and the sound produced and propagated by an acoustical device. Loudspeakers, microphones, amplifying systems, and digital conversion are the elements of sound processing that still have to achieve what I would call a more `realistic' image of sound."

David Wessel (researcher and director of the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies at the University of California, Berkeley): "Standard general-purpose processors like the PowerPC and Pentium are now capable of real-time music synthesis and processing. Laptops will become the signal processors and synthesis engines of choice, at the core of the new performance-oriented electronic music instrumentation. I'm confident that we will also see the development of a new generation of gesture-sensing systems designed with music in mind, including a number of the common interfaces like drawing tablets and game controllers adapted for the intimate and expressive control of musical material. And I see, and am beginning to hear, the emergence of an electronic music that might be more akin to chamber music or that of a small jazz group where musical dialog and improvisation play essential roles."

David Zicarelli (software developer and president of Cycling '74): "The computer, synthesizer, and tape recorder have become the new folk instruments of industrialized cultures, replacing the guitar. An overwhelming number of recordings are being produced in the electronica genre right now, and there is no sign that this will stop anytime soon."

You may now be wondering how to take advantage of the resources available to you right away and in the years to come. Start by thinking about what kind of music you want to write and which tools will best help you reach your goals. Explore the Web and read magazines such as EM for new developments in hardware and software. Above all, learn the history: read books on the subject and study recordings by the pioneers as well as the current movers and shakers. A 100-year tradition is waiting to be explored, and the more you know about the past, the better you can shape your own future.

Joel Chadabe is a composer, past president of Intelligent Music, author of Electric Sound, and president of the Electronic Music Foundation. He can be reached at chadabe@emf.org.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

For an overview of electronic-music history, read Electric Sound, by Joel Chadabe (Prentice Hall, 1996).

For an overview of MIDI, read MIDI for the Professional, by Paul D. Lehrman and Tim Tully (Amsco Publications, 1993).

The following compact discs feature music mentioned in this article:

After Some Songs (Deep Listening) is a group of Joel Chadabe's abstractions of jazz standards, for computer and percussion.

CDCM Computer Music Series, volume 3 (Centaur), includes Carla Scaletti's sunSurgeAutomata, for the Platypus.

CDCM Computer Music Series, volume 6 (Centaur), includes Jon Appleton's Brush Canyon, for Synclavier.

CDCM Computer Music Series, volume 24 (Centaur), includes Joel Chadabe's Follow Me Softly, for Synclavier and percussion, and Cort Lippe's Music for Clarinet and ISPW.

Computer Music Currents 2 (Wergo) includes Emmanuel Ghent's Phosphones, composed at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1971.

Gottfried Michael Koenig (BVHaast) includes Koenig's Output, composed in 1979 at the Institute of Sonology.

Women in Electronic Music 1977 (CRI) includes Laurie Spiegel's Appalachian Grove, composed at Bell Labs in 1974.

These and other interesting items are available from CDeMusic at www.cdemusic.org.

The Electronic Century, Parts I–III

Part I: Beginnings

Part II: Tales of the Tape

Part III: Computers and Analog Synthesizers