FAQ     Questions around Cybermusic

How do you differentiate "physical" and "non-physical" control of music?

Singing, clapping, playing… - all kinds of human physical actions that produce sound, originally in a mechanical environment. In electronic music, physical control can be seen when striking a keyboard key, or moving a slider of a mixer. Any musical creation beyond physical control could simply be considered as not-playable or not-singable music, today achievable by means of electronic technology. If you, for example, define a falling halftone during 10 seconds, this would be hardly achievable by a mechanical instrument, and will be even difficult when moving a pitch bend of a synthesizer. A little sound program will produce this most simply.

I would like to know more about the principle of audio-receptive accumulation

Visual accumulation happens when you are watching a painting. Your eye is jumping from place to place and with the time you come closer to the subject while tracking it in your own way. With your ear you are devoted to the musical track itself. You have to follow each second in its being as is and every following event is related to the former one. This is where audio-receptive accumulation happens. The way how you are able to capture new information in the musical stream requires a feeling of ongoing qualitative changes. If you feel that the changes are always of the same kind, or there are changes of no meaning, or there are no changes at all, your attention will decrease very fast and you will skip the track. No need to say that this principle works for every listener individually according to what he has already experienced (accumulated). Music with "changes of no meaning" might be not yet your deal. After listening a few times to the same track you may learn the "meaning" and enjoy it even...

What are the "musical sediments" of physical control?

Periodical metrics such as a 4/4-beat to synchronize all musical layers of a piece, fixed tone scales especially in a central-tone oriented diatonic system (a matter of tonal synchronization), instrumental voices with sound scopes that are restricted to mechanical physics. Those high developed musical structures are the direct outcome of music that is controlled by human sounds and mechanical instruments. In a time when only human voices and mechanical instruments have been available, a great development started - especially in old Europe - combining all those activities in a synchronized matter: Great orchestra music of the 19th century was one of its latest results. Synchronized metrics and a diatonic system of equidistant pitches are the manifestation of this process and turned into a world-wide standard for any kind of common musical understanding, like in Jazz, Pop, etc. Today, this kind of world music resides in a phase of complete astonishment of recycling without getting new basic results like a real new style, etc. In cybermusic, there is no reason any more for devoting to those structures that have been built due to constraints of human physical conditions. However, still everyone is used to it and it is very hard to achieve new musical "agreements" in the overall musical communication.

Is there any cybermusic written for classical mechanical instruments (like a symphony orchestra)?

This is filling new wine in old skins! Although, it has been done already rather successfully in the 60ths and 70ths of the last century. Listen to composers like Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Xenakis, among others, you will be amazed, it sounds almost like electronic music. On the other hand, music that tries to overcome musical sediments without leaving its production conditions can't find a big future. Study the craziness of many, many contemporary music and the amazing sportive abilities of modern interprets that use classical mechanical instruments. Listen how these instruments are treated to find new sounds and how they fail often to escape from presenting just their own limits.

Is Techno 'Cybermusic'?

I don't think so. In electronic music, using a 4/4 beat, a bass riff in b flat minor, etc., is filling old wine in a new skin! On the other hand, there is a lot of great music, using beat and stable tone sequences just as a backbone for presenting most advanced sounds.

Your piece "Silence" of "Piano Games" could be played by any pianist. Why should you consider it being Cybermusic since it sounds totally under physical control?

Absolutely right. I shouldn't. On the other hand, it has been created absolutely randomly in its entirety. I selected the given version from approximately 20 different outputs. Does this say something to you regarding 'musical information' and 'authenticity' in cybermusic?

What do you think about a "sound installation" system that behaves interactively with its visitors?

In this case, the visitor enters physical control in an hybrid sound generation system. I believe that physical control of an electronic sound generation system cannot compete with the results of musical non-realtime editing work. In a real-time environment you need to learn first about your possibilities and repeat endless sessions for optimizing your results. After you can't achieve any more better results due to your time and physical constraints, methods of non-realtime control would still be able to enhance the musical results significantly. On the other hand, a real-time environment may provide you with feedbacks and results, you would never experience in another way. But listen to such a complex output and try then to change what your ear may find worth to change...

I cannot think of a concert of cybermusic. I would miss the action on the stage and I'm tired of futuristic multimedia experiments. Where and how cybermusic should be played?

Cybermusic is not made for concerts. There is no reason to collect people and to force them to listen to a piece of cybermusic together, even so excellent electro-acoustic conditions are a great musical deal. Remember that in the time of the mechanical tone production there was an absolute need to come together and to listen as one. Beautiful! Cybermusic is naturally distributed and percept in a non-synchronous way and this is not a new principle: A simple book is distributed and receipt exactly the same way. An author of cybermusic writes his music directly just as a book writer does. There is no need for playing and performing it in one time for everybody. Take your headphones, "read" a piece of cybermusic and share your experiences with other "readers"!

I like to compare electronic music with painting. Unlike in the old way of creation, I can jump in my computer program within the piece to add and to fix here and there, in the beginning and in the end, till I'm satisfied. Why do you rather compare making this kind of music with writing a book?

I still find that the book thing is more adequate since, as a result, it emphasizes the aspect of having the need to percept it from the beginning to the end in order to get the message - rather diving into a picture for an unspecified period of time. The perception of a book compares more to the principle of audio-receptive accumulation even so the perception process can be interrupted.

Send your question or comment

Top        Overview

© 2022 Copyright. All rights reserved.