Music 680: Special Topics in Music - Interactivity and Improvisation (Spring 2007)
Wednesdays 4:30 - 7:10 pm, Music B40
Christopher Burns (cburns at uwm dot edu)
office hours: Music 367, Tuesday afternoons, 1-2:30 pm or by appointment

Course description: Conceptual and practical work in interaction design for musical performance and sound art. Discussion of pioneering creative work/research and study of the Pd programming language culminate in a final creative project.

This course is an elective for the Digital Arts and Culture Certificate Program.

Prerequisites: Open to juniors, seniors, and graduate students in the Music Department and the DIVAS program; other students by consent of the instructor. Qualities that will be essential for the course include patience, curiosity, diligence, cr eativity, and aesthetic open-mindedness. Prior experience with programming is not required. Please let the instructor know if you need any special accommodations.

Learning goals and measurement:
1. Students will increase in or acquire facility with the Pd programming language. Measured through various short programming assignments and a final creative project.
2. Students will learn about pioneering interactive works in the fields of music and sound art, and about various paradigms for interactivity. Measured through a mid-semester writing assignment and weekly discussion.
3. Students will learn classic techniques for audio analysis, interaction design, generative composition, sound synthesis, and signal processing. Measured through various short programming assignments and a final creative project.
4. Students will integrate these ideas, techniques, and tools into a substantial creative project.

Course requirements:
1. Please attend all classes and arrive on time. If you need to miss a class for any reason, please let the instructor know in advance. Students who miss two or more classes will receive reduced grades (one reduction for each absence, beginning with the second). Special events listed on the syllabus are also included in this attendance requirement (though other instructor-approved contemporary music concerts can be subsituted if absolutely necessary). Please be sure to find the instructor at each event and make sure you are counted.
2. Please prepare for class by completing all reading and listening assignments. Remember that listening is an active process; if you are multitasking you are unlikely to get much out of the experience. You may also wish to take notes on your listening - what are you hearing? How do you make sense of it? How does it change over time (what is the form of the work?) Please arrive for class ready to participate in the discussion; this will count for 10% of your final grade.
3. Please complete all programming and written assignments in a timely fashion. The programming assignments constitute 40% of the final grade, the writing assignment 20%. Assignments are due on time; late submissions will receive reduced grades (10% reduction per day). If you are having difficulty completing an assignment please contact the instructor as soon as possible, and before the due date.
4. Students should be prepared to propose a project which addresses a specific creative issue involving the integration of interactivity into live performance, installation, or other artwork, to compose a work addressing that challenge, and to present their work as part of the Electro-Acoustic Salon on Thursday, May 17, at 7:30 pm. The final project is worth 30% of the final grade.

Course materials: Listening and reading assignments for the course are available online from the UWM Library electronic reserves. The Pd software used in the course is freely available and runs on the Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux operating systems. (It is already installed on all the workstations in Music 270, as well as B40, B40A, and B50). Curtis Roads' The Computer Music Tutorial (MIT Press) is a useful reference for sound synthesis tecchniques.
Pd software: http://www-crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/software.html
UWM Uniform Syllabus Policies: http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/SecU/SyllabusLinks.pdf

Course schedule:

January 24
topics:
course introduction
Pd boot camp I - control
class notes
handouts
software components:
FM synthesizer
January 29: Pd help session, Music 270, 4:30-7:00 pm
January 31
topics:
Pd boot camp II - signals
class notes
handouts
software components:
granular synthesizer
listening:
George Lewis Voyager Duo 1, 2, 5, and 8
reading:
George Lewis, "Too Many Notes: Computers, Complexity, and Culture in Voyager," Leonardo Music Journal 10 (2000), pp. 33-39.
assignment 1 due:
make a patch that uses the fm-synth~ object to generate sound
February 5: Pd help session, Music 270, 4:30-7:00 pm
February 7
topics:
signal analysis I - amplitude following (env~)/pitch tracking (fiddle~)
score-following aesthetics and overview
class notes
software components:
amplitude thresholding and pitch tracking
listening:
Pierre Boulez ...explosante-fixe...
Jonathan Harvey One Evening...
reading:
Miller Puckette and Ted Apel, "Real-time audio analysis tools for Pd and MSP", Proceedings, 1998 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC98).
February 14
topics:
arrays I - data collection and representation
class notes
software components:
data filtering, storage, and retrieval
listening:
David Tudor Neural Synthesis No. 8
reading:
Roger Dannenberg, "Music Representation Issues, Techniques, and Systems," Computer Music Journal 17(3) (Fall 1993), pp. 20-30.
assignment 2 due:
use amplitude or pitch-tracking to drive a musical process
February 21
topics:
arrays II - data processing (windowing, moving averages, thinning)
responsive environments - Alvin Lucier, David Tudor, Jim Campbell, Max Neuhaus
class notes
software components:
windowing, histograms
listening:
Alvin Lucier Small Waves
David Tudor Sliding Pitches in the Rainforest in the Field: Rainforest Version IV
reading:
Sergi Jorda, "Digital Instruments and Players: Part I - Efficiency and Apprenticeship," Proceedings, 2004 New Instruments for Musical Expression (NIME04) Conference.
Sergi Jorda, "Digital Instruments and Players: Part II - Diversity, Freedom, and Control," Proceedings, 2004 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC04).
February 28
topics:
signal analysis II - fiddle~, bonk~ (onset detection, tempo following, spectral analysis)
class notes
software components
percussion tracking, timbre analysis
listening:
Mark Applebaum/Paul Dresher Licensed to Fail
Curtis Bahn Ornithology
Matthew Burtner Delta2
reading:
Peter Desain and Henkjan Honing, "Computational Models of Beat Induction: The Rule-Based Approach", Journal of New Music Research 28(1) (1999), pp. 29-42.
assignment 3 due:
data collection task
March 7
topics:
signal analysis III - composite analyses for material identification and contrast recognition
class notes
software components:
textural contrast induction
listening:
Matt Ingalls CLAIRE.01, CLAIRE.02
reading:
Bill Hsu, "Managing Gesture and Timbre for Analysis and Instrument Control in an Interactive Environment," Proceedings, 2006 New Instruments for Musical Expression (NIME06) Conference.
March 14
topics:
generative algorithms I - constrained randomness
Iannis Xenakis La legende d'Eer
class notes
software components:
synthesis constrained by input
listening:
James Tenney Fabric for Ché and Dialogue
assignment 4 due:
write a brief paper comparing the technical and aesthetic approaches to interactivity in any two of the assigned listenings
March 21 [Spring Break]
March 28
topics:
generative algorithms II - automata
class notes
software components:
demonstration automata
listening:
Roger Dean Evolution 2
William Kleinsasser Available Instruments
reading:
Thomas Ciufo, "Beginner's Mind: An environment for sonic improvisation," Proceedings, 2005 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC05).
assignment 5 due:
final project proposal
March 30 special event: George Lewis, "Living with Creative Machines," Curtin 175, 2 pm
April 4
topics:
gesture capture/transformation
class notes
code resources:
stealing expressivity/gesture capture
listening:
Anthony Braxton Open Aspect #4 and Open Aspect #6
reading:
Christopher Dobrian, "Strategies for Continuous Pitch and Amplitude Tracking in Realtime Interactive Improvisation Software", Proceedings, 2004 Sound and Music Computing (SMC04) Conference.
April 11: no class meeting
April 18
topics:
signal processing I - filtering (filterbanks, vocoding, convolution)
class notes
software components:
filterbanks and dynamics processing
listening:
Karlheinz Stockhausen Kurzwellen
reading:
Curtis Roads, excerpts from "Basic Concepts of Signal Processing," from The Computer Music Tutorial (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 387-432.
assignment 6 due:
gesture capture
April 19 special event: Electro-Acoustic Music Center concert, Fine Arts Recital Hall, 7:30 pm
April 25
topics:
signal processing II - delay techniques (reverb, flanging)
class notes
software components:
delay and spatialization tools
listening:
Pauline Oliveros Lear on the Road
Kaija Saariaho Nymphea (Jardin Secret III)
Olga Neuwirth Instrumental-Inseln aus "Bählamms-Fest" II
reading:
Curtis Roads, excerpts "Basic Concepts of Signal Processing" and "Sound Spatialization and Reveberation", from The Computer Music Tutorial (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 432-448, 472-492.
May 2
topics:
sample capture/transformation
software components:
recording/manipulation/playback tools
listening:
EKG & Giuseppe Ielasi Detach
Michael Theodore Goatsong
May 9
topics:
Q&A and course wrap-up
May 17, 7:30 pm: Electro-Acoustic Music Center Salon 22
final project presentations