Thanks, Larry. I appreciate your comment.
Let's be precise about the meaning of aleatoric music. It pertains to
chance, leaving some aspects of the music undetermined by the composer.
In the history of music, chance music holds a venerable place, and much
predates the synthesizer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatoric_musicMy little 'pixie' piece actually isn't very aleatoric. It's a recorded
performance, albeit a simple one. I set up a deterministic sequence of
notes. I manually mixed in the FM and punched in and out the digital
effect, during the recording. It had one pseudo-random element, which
was the transposition on the quantizer being changed by a sample & hold
every 16 beats. If I had twiddled the transpose knob during the
recording instead of using the sample & hold, it would not have been
aleatoric at all. (Nor would it suddenly, due to that fact, have become
better music.)
It is relatively easy to make some interesting sounds using an
electronic synthesizer to impart chance elements, if you understand how
to use the synthesizer. I, and others, have a lot of fun doing just
that, with what talent we may possess. A composer could use a
synthesizer for more serious aleatoric work, and, depending on their
talent and the listener's taste, produce some truly excellent music.
-Richard Brewster
Larry David wrote:
> Thanks for posting that Richard - I always enjoy hearing what other
> people are doing with their synths. Just in case my comments in
> reply to Kenneth's post be misunderstood, I like all kinds of synth
> music, including aleatoric, and I appreciate it when someone is
> willing to share their music even if it isn't the best thing they've
> ever done or heard. Very few of us are really great at synth
> programming ∗or∗ music, but we can all enjoy it - our stuff and
> others'. Keep it coming...
>
> ld
>
> On May 13, 2007, at 10:54 AM, Richard Brewster wrote:
>
>
>> http://www.pugix.com/music-samples.htm
>>
>> Click on the Pixies link.
>>
>> And after what I said yesterday about notes!
>>
>> -Richard Brewster
>>
>>