Music In The Air: a theoretical model and software system for music analysis and composition

Abstract

As a composer in the very late twentieth century my goal is to inject as much intelligence and substance into the process of music-making as possible, to present listeners with sensory and intellectual metaphorical tools that enable them to perceive relationships of time and space in ways that might otherwise go unnoticed. Music-oriented researchers in the fields of psychoacoustics and cognition in recent years have viewed the computer as a means of simply extending and rationalising traditional music theory and form, rather than summarising the base of musical knowledge we have inherited and then breaking free of those constraints. Performers, composers and producers in the field of popular entertainment continue to use technology to narrow rather than broaden aesthetic boundaries in the so-called creative arts.

A new aesthetic paradigm is needed . . .

Technology provides us with the tools we require in order to build a genuinely new method of music creation and listening. I propose that it is time to invest our energies in the creation of visionary learning tools that enhance our ability to evolve in our relationship to ourselves, to one another, to the planet, and perhaps ultimately to the stars. It is the author’s strongest desire to allow for the full realisation of what computer music has long held the promise to provide – limitless variation with infinite control.

Toward this end, I document here (i) a theory of music that attempts to assimilate the infinite and subtle interconnectedness of the human experience into a single symbolic structure, and (ii) the application of this theory to the extension of an emerging genre – the environmentally interactive computer music system – designed for eventual use by people not necessarily aware of the underlying technical and aesthetic principles at work, but fully appreciative of the profound personal benefits to be found embedded therein.

Owing to space limitations, I will focus almost exclusively on the theoretical and aesthetic issues that have driven the software development, and leave a detailed discussion of the system specifications and its operation to a separate article.