Computer: Just a Box, Blue or Beige

Dennis Báthory-Kitsz

Eric Lyon is infuriating. I think he knows it, and enjoys it.

He asked:“I’m interested in having you talk about being an independent computermusician. How you deal with hardware, software, digital music distribution, and whatit’s like being ‘out there’.”

Easy one. At first. Then I went through the stages—denial, anger, resignation.

What sort of question is that? Independent computer musician? That sounds like a lameStar Trek joke.

I’m a composer.I use a computer. Who doesn’t?

To me, it seemed a natural evolutionary course in the past quarter-century. To you, it mayseem unworthy of discussion—the computer has been abête familialefor your entirelives. It is unlikely you’ve ever met a musician whowasn’ta computer musician, whetherit’s a college studio composer or a garage-band guitarist with a rack of special effects.

Enumerator

So let me enumerate how I think an independent composer uses a computer. Theemphasis is onindependentbecause in academia or within the commercial musicestablishment, much of the service is provided by others, including students.

1. Computer as hammer (do what I make you do).2. Computer as servant (do what I order you to do).3. Computer as amanuensis (do what I need you to do).4. Computer as producer (finish what I’ve done).5. Computer as inspiration (find me some possibilities)

Computer as hammerbegan in the iron days of the 1970s and early 1980s. If a computerwas needed to function in some musical role, customized hardware was built and low-level software was written. The independent computer composer kept a bench ofsoldering irons, wire-wrap tools, transistors, integrated circuits, machine-languagemanuals, and monitor/editing software.

Computer as servantdates from the digital sound-aware days of the mid-1980s—the Macand MIDI era, the stand-alone synth era, when composers turned away from hand-built

equipment, but not away from brain-(break)(ach)ing programming. Embedded computercontrol was born.

Computer as assistantbegins with the application era, where general-purpose sound,notation, and manipulation software combined with a plethora of relatively inexpensiveaudio hardware. It also corresponds with the rise of PCs as the default platform for manyindependent composers.

Computer as produceris a post-hardware concept, that is, the herald of the appliance era.The computer becomes tertiary—a boxed product secondary to the meta-application thatcoordinates the suites of software services that are themselves secondary to industry-standard processes of recording, effects, mixing, and mastering.

Computer as inspirationis one of the most interesting, and actually predates all of theseother aspects, and lives on through them.

The Hammer, The Amanuensis, and The Muse (I)

What is built with one’s own hammer is original, personal, and cherished.

Behrmann, Spiegel, and Dodge

Early inspirations were David Behrmann, Laurie Spiegel, and Charles Dodge (whoteaches here at Dartmouth). Behrmann created interactive pieces with a microcomputer.Spiegel’s software alone created sound output, and some of it is coursing away from thesolar system on the Voyager spacecraft. Dodge extracted magnetic field charts anddevised software that played the patterns and textures.

With the possibility of electronic assessment and digital replication of events, I beganinventing compositions.Network C/R,created—or rather scored in 1975—a performancewith tethered dancer and interactive electronics, using the dancer’s body to control themusic via a web of sensors. Three versions were written and the hardware and costumesdesigned, but none was ever realized, largely because of the cost.

Ultimately, it was Behrmann’s hammer that I recall best. In 1977, I encountered hisFigure in a Clearingin person. It was performed with a cello and a single-board, 1,024-byte memory KIM-1 microcomputer, outfitted with sensors and wave generators. Icoveted this ability to modify output from input in a predictable and self-standing way,

and promptly exhausted my life savings to buy a computer, learn to program, and startbuilding hardware—casting my own hammers.

Example: The Killer interface, and “Rando’s Poetic License” scores.

“The Custom TRS-80” and “Learning the 6809”

In the mid-1980s, I was still building hammers with my own small computer company. Icreated the interactiveNighthawkin 1984, using several Tandy Color Computers to forma virtual cube. Visitors could cause the system to react in various sonic ways, includingmy first experiments in “negative” reaction, or silencing, like electronic insects. TheColor Computers were ideal for an independent computer composer—inexpensive at$200, and easy to interface with a set of published schematics and specifications, andusing non-proprietary parts.

In 1986, sculptor Fernanda D’Agostino and I created a new “culture” calledIn Bocca alLupo. This was an artificial culture invented by sculptor D’Agostino and for which Ideveloped an artificial lexicon of sound and sonic ritual and language.

Original text and photos are found at http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/bocca/

Infrared output and sensor arrays were connected to a set of five computers with data-gathering boards, sound-generating software, and hardware controllers (for tape loops),managed by a critical algorithm with an ability to learn the use of the space.

Multiple speakers were embedded in walls and sculptures. Visitors’ movement throughthe space was detected by sensors, and the computers determined their location, directionof movement, and motion quality. The immediate data was compared with recent andhistorical data on the room’s use.

Warning-like sounds grew louder or changed character; steadier sounds quieted as insectsor frogs might do when disturbed; other sounds moved away from approaching visitors sothey always appeared to sound from the distance. These electronic sounds were mixedwith prerecorded chantlike or percussionlike natural and electronic sounds (on the tapeloops) to provide a constant aural nest and cultural immersion.

Control for In Bocca al Lupo

During the five-week installation, the computer system learned how the space was used.Rarely visited areas (such as corners) became more aggressive in their (re)actions,frequently used areas (such as the single entry door) became uninterested in nearbymotion and made little change.

Battery-backup memory chips and hardware real-time clocks kept the changes alive andthe learning ongoing during the exhibition, even during the night, so the system knewwhen to get quiet or constant. But in the 15 years sinceBoccahas been dismantled, theembedded batteries have died in the chips, and so theBoccahistory has been erased frommemory. A fitting cultural end.

Bocca was rudimentary ‘intelligence’—little more than building a tiny, intertwineddatabase (almost too small to call it that) and having the program modify itself (a BadThing in computerdom) not because it was truly intelligent, but because there wasn’tenough memory or processor speed to save and search huge arrays of information.

The digital sounds inBoccawere all produced by a program I wrote calledQuaver,whichproduced four independent voices per processor, which was marketed by my company.

Example: Quaver book and tape.

Boccareceived only passing attention in the days when personal computers were not highon the public’s (or art publishers’) horizon. Some of these ideas are being reworked todaywith more powerful machines than 0.9 MHz computers hooked together with homemadehardware. I wrote all the software in assembler, and burned it into EPROMs, as thosewere the days when disk drives were expensive and unreliable for running mission-critical applications like an installation; there were no electronic curators in 1986—whenI flew back to Vermont, it just plain had to keep working for 40 days!

(A similar outdoor installation,Travelers Restin 1991, was vandalized. I wrote aperformance piece for it, since the interactive space was ruined. Documentation ofWolf5is at http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/wolf5/)

The Hammer, The Amanuensis, and The Muse (II)

The application era changed my role as a computer musician. Teams of programmerscould produce general-purpose sound, notation, and manipulation software faster than a

single composer could create them, and audio hardware dropped below the cost of asingle analog-to-digital computer chip.

Example: 16-bit A/D chip

But simultaneously and sadly, a new chasm appeared between the academically or studio-associated composers and the independents, as Macintosh computers were provided, in amarketing coup, at low cost to schools and students. On the other hand, prices started asteep (and continuing) descent on business-class machines—IBM PC-compatibles.

A choice of different processor families and architectures, not to mention a difference inmarketing philosophy, widened the chasm. On one side were the wealthy and influentialearly adopters, including film companies, sound studios, and universities. Academicallysupported software for experimental music was written for the expensive iron; business-class machines were shunned.

Today this may seem insignificant, but for the impecunious independent computercomposer in the later 1980s, it was debilitating and occasionally humiliating. A languagesuch as the excellent Phil Burk-Larry Polansky collaborationHMSL was (and remains)unavailable for the PC. Composers such as Joel Chadabe declared the Windows platformentirely unsuitable for musical creation. The IRCAMenfant terrible, the Maxprogramming environment, was kept away from PCs. Competitions and conferencesrejected non-Apple formats, and CD producers refused accompanying materials createdon Windows PCs; some still do.

The intervening years have revealed the platforms to be equally capable, but for morenearly a decade, the deed was done. Electronic composition became a serious anddisturbing class issue, the cause of no little bitterness for composers like me.

(Ultimately, that is a diversion from the idea of computer as amanuensis, but an importantpart in the history of the computer composers and how the most visible among themveered dangerously away from a popular audience.)

Once the economic viability of the PC platform was discovered, assistive softwarebecame available—scoring programs likeFinale, sequencers likeCakewalk, soundeditors likeCool Edit, manipulation tools likeAudiomulch,and production suites likeSonar.Independent composers were no longer looking enviously in the window.

The computer assistant was welcome. In 1991, I spent a month in Cologne, but I neversaw the city. My family did ... while I stayed in the kitchen, copying notes of an orchestralscore for rehearsal. Having missed the glorious old town, I resolved never to spendanother day with pen in hand, and obtained software for scoring.

But that was merely an extension of existing tasks. The real excitement for a computercomposer was having a body of tools that analog forms could only approximate. Some,

such as replacing the razor blade with the non-destructive, ‘undoable’ digital splice, werewelcome enough to restore and ‘clean up’ earlier, imprecise versions, much as FrankZappa did when the Synclavier and digital editing became available to him.

Other opportunities were more significant. The manipulation of sound waves in time andpitch, the reanalysis through transformation, and indeed the transformation of non-soundobjects into sound ones, were facilitated by the computer. In 1970, I spent days makingthe hundreds of splices, making the re-recordings and overdubs, adding the cobbled-together special effects, to create myElectronic Construction.Today—assuming I had theinspiration and initiative—it would be an afternoon’s relaxation.

Interestingly, reducing drudgery opened the doors to experimentation and improvisation,offering the ability to inspire.

The Hammer, The Amanuensis, and The Muse (III)

The computer as inspiration is of great interest to me. The question always arises: “Wheredo you get your notes?” In the electroacoustic genres, ‘notes’ is not the right term, but thequestion of wherefrom-comes-yon-inspiration is valid.

Here’s what I mean—though this may seem obvious from the perspective of this century:

When caught up in the production process—inking and copying or cutting and splicing—a great deal of mental energy is depleted in meeting the standards of precision required. Itis the rare independent composer today who has copyists or workshops, so the enervationof creating scores, parts, and tapes from raw materials is distracting and mentallywasteful. As our own driven and underpaid employees, we become exhausted with theexactitude of the preparation, and push away the mental intrusion of inspiration andimagination. It’s not a universal result, but it’s a familiar one among composers.

However, the removal of these menial duties does not merely cast the computer into therole as our slave; instead, because it is possible to explore possibilities both non-destructively and playfully, we can visit again at the court of improvisation. This is adifferent kingdom from that of Charles Dodge’s inspiredEarth’s Magnetic Field,wherethousands of punch cards had to be exactingly prepared for the sound to arise, biddenfrom the electrons.

Instead, it’s possible to set automated processes to going forward—not unlike but thenagainvery unlikethe processes of the minimalists. It isauditionable,it is selectable,andsignificantly, it isdismissable.Like Charlie Parker’s solos, each one can be heard as anon-the-feet composition, or a practice session, or a jam between composer andcompadre—except that it’s alsoreplicable. And once what’s been done is replicable, itbecomes malleable through analysis. It, in effect, stills the process of sound, freezes theimprovisation, and lays it naked on the screen.

Okay, whoa, maybe poetry damages this thought. In practical terms, a composer caninvent a process, or simply distill it from existing music—“how did Mozart do it?” Thenthe process of Mozarting can be set in motion (it might have been called development in‘dot music’ terms). The Mozarting can be done again and again, tweaking the parametersuntil it’s Haydning or Brahmsing or Stockhausening, stashing the results.

Within the dot-music world, Clarence Barlow’sAutobusksets parameters for rhythmic,harmonic, and melodic content so that a single sonic idea can be mutated into a classicalcomposition or an avant-garde romp. Peter Beyls’sOscaraccompanies what he plays in avery postmodern way, while Henning Berg’sTangohas a jazz expressiveness built in. Allthree are a kind of jam session, but Jeff Harrington and Nick Didkovsky use theelectronic options to create possibilities which they examine and dismiss.

Barlow, Beyls, Berg, Harrington, Didkovsky

Within the electroacoustic realm, the possibilities are not easily imagined because theprecedent is so recent, without the centuries of exploration that has refined (and limited)the dot-music choices. Experimentation is not merely an opportunity, it is more than anobligation—it is an inevitability.

(It also returns to the days of the analog synthesizer, the god among machines. The godamong machines was a trickster, permitting alaissez-fairerandomness, but at the price ofreplicability. It was a wellspring of raw ideas. But more on that in another talk.)

Killer

One of the joys of (for example) abusing analog synths, sendingAudiomulch into afrenzy, dropping the silverware, cross-wiring hardware, or changing geography is theability to release control and expand my choices. Perhaps it takes genius that I don’t haveto be clear from concept to realization. The devil in me certainly likes to pollute themathematical pool whenever possible. It seems I can hear an algorithm beginning its flowdownstream from quite a distance, and I dump a bucket of fish (or worse) into it. I believein approximation. That might also explain why I’m especially fond of involvingperformers or slippery elements in my electroacoustic compositions.

I must admit that unfettered experimentation can be interpreted as the refuge of theincompetent—“so you can’t do the math.” I can. But I don’t. I won’t. I hate it. It’s not auseful path for me. There are already enough choices that I’ve found my owncontributions unhelpful to my work. Not to mention that I spent the better part of a decadecreating byte-by-byte code before I realized others were creating much better hammers forme to use to shape sound. I found myself bound up in the process of creating the tools,and those misspent hours kept me from the process of creating the art. Others can doboth, but I’m not one of them. And there’s also my distaste for music where it says“algorithm” (“Here comes another one”, as Monty Python might sing) before it says“beauty” (fill in your own artistic goal).

Epiphanies I’ve had as an experimental computer composer. I was hard at work on anorchestral piece propelled by Markov analysis and then acoustically modeled. 20 minutesinto the full score, I threw it up because it was marvelous but empty. Yes, so I took whatI’d learned into subsequent compositions and only then created ones that I actuallywanted to hear. Those moments of refusal are actually the beginning of a voyage ofdiscovery.

(It is, of course, a painful irony for me when my works which have no consciousmathematical or algorithmic basis get heard as having one. But that’s another story.)

Beethoven may have been inspired by sound of the brook or the thunderstorm, but thecomputer composer is inspired by possibilities outside natural manifestations and within anon-framework of all-things-possible-even-if-unheard.

(Again, to divert, some computer composers have flown from sound and especially fromlistener to a cloister of concept, where the argument of cause-effect, narrative, or purepresence obtains a higher perspective than the resulting sound. From the mouth of acomposer-philosopher genius like John Cage, it is wise. From others, I fear, it is lameobfuscation. I hope it will pass.)

Yes, it is an inevitability because the language—this term is itself disputed by many in theelectroacoustic/computer music realm—of creation and reception, of composition andlistening, is rudimentary and often opaque. (And curiously, it has once again split alonglines of empowerment, and separately identified the ‘computer composers’ of garagebandsvs.those in the universities.) (So many diversions, so little time.)

Audience, and Distribution, a/k/a, Your Music Stink (The Hook I)

The flight from audience and sometimes sound itself underscores that the crisis for anycomposer, and in particular the independent computer composer, befalls the artist inrecovering an audience. Within some scenes—Hollywood film or Ivy League colleges—the audience is built-in, even if small. Within other scenes—the whole dominion that

might be generically, if mis-, defined as techno—the audience is present, if notlisteningany more than pop forms are generally listened to.

But where experiment remains true to its background of discovery, regardless ofconsequence, the independent computer composer rarely find an audience within even thecircle of friends and family and neighborhood. Pop rulez, for there is no Sunday afternoonyard sale of electroacoustic experiments.

In a globe of billions, however, the diaspora of an audience can be identified, invited, andbrought together electronically. This combined theatre, library, and bazaar is, of course,the Web.

Again, for you, this is hardly news. But it is not Napster or Gnutella that matter. It is thecombined access to tools (an old concept pioneered by Stuart Brand) and reverse-accessprovided for the creations from those tools. I can find software and discover newcompositional ideas. I can place my sounds in public view. I can make my dot-musicscores available.

Sometimes I lose them to others, yet (though this may be a limited view in the copyright-happy environment following the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act), I’m delightedto see my material in others’ music. I’ve made the acquaintance of dozens of othercomposers, I’ve heard new work, every day dozens of visitors hear what I create,hundreds grab scores to my acoustic material every month, I’ve had performances andcommissions exclusively attributable to my on-line presence, I earn more royalties fromMP3.com than ASCAP—and I’ve had no small share of welcome professional critiquesof my work, criticisms that have helped me to grow (though the email that read only“your music stink” was a little sparse).

But the problems don’t go away. A review of genres at MP3.com this morning shows 43genres under ‘electronic’—including such fine divisions as illbient and happy hardcore—but the only divisions of ‘experimental’ being listed as ‘minimal’ and ‘noise’. Theexperimental computer composers are lumped under (you guessed it) ‘classical’ as‘electronic classical’.

This reveals that, despite access to toolsand distribution, the computer composers havefailed to make the case for the richness and diversity (not to mention theexcitement) ofwhat we do.

Recently, the manager of the station where our radio/cyber showKalvos & Damian’s NewMusic Bazaaris produced asked why we kept a separate library of music for our show inour home studios. We explained that it would get broken up and lost in inappropriatecategories and genres at the radio station, undergoing its own kind of diaspora. He repliedthat it could be put together in the classical section. Imagine, if you will, how difficult itwas to explain that ‘classical’, as he thought of it, actually encompassed as many genres

and styles as all the divisions presently used as broadcast categories—and I ticked offmore than two dozen contemporary ‘classical’über-genres for him.

Audience, and Distribution, and Reluctance (The Hook II)

Another experience that militates against the independent (non-academicand non-commercial) computer composer is pride. The majority of composers on a listserv towhich I subscribe refuse to make their material available on line because the files wouldbe compressed, to their acoustic detriment. Indeed, some composers whom I’ve heardcomplainbitterly on that list about being ignored do not participate in the free onlinestreaming/download presentation sites, nor have they created their ownstreaming/download sites. On their personal sites, only a few electroacoustic/computercomposers provide links to downloadable live/electronic performance materials, or even aconvenient way to order their creations.

I agree that compression is audible and deleterious. But compressions and distortions andmisrepresentations exist atevery level—whether they are limited word size (16 bits forcommercial recordings), streaming compression (loss of information, such as mp3 files),compansion (FM radio broadcasting), or even play on the average classroom machine orboombox.

I promote the online distribution of music, even if it not every acoustic goal is met—forwithout listeners,noneof them are met, except in a personal, isolated way that ill servesthe communicative nature of the sonic artform.

Composers are reluctant to be aesthetically or acoustically misrepresented as well as to beinappropriately nestled among dissimilar works. I understand those concerns even if I amnot especially sympathetic to them. I have heard every possible excuse to avoid beingheard in ‘commonplace’ venues.

To the on-line isolationist, it’s a discussion of extremes. Composer Lindsay Manningwrote to me, “By your definition, eating a frozen tv dinner, prepared originally by afabulous chef with the freshest ingredients, is just as good as eating it immediately onceit’s been prepared.”

Yes, that’s a fair analogy. But I don’t say “just as good.” Ido say that the combination oftime, money, and opportunity to sit down in the restaurant of a fabulous chef is out ofreach for a great proportion of the population, including those who might very much liketo expand their tastes and sample such food. If compromised replicas are their onlychance to enjoy the dinner prepared as close as possible to the original, but in quantityand preserved for wide distribution, then the chef who would deny that is a selfish one,more self-concerned than outwardly concerned.

I suppose there’s a political context there. To be selfish is the chef’s right. It may give thechef great pleasure to live in a private, upper-class, moneyed world and create a few

recipes a year, and have the chance to earn a living and critical praise by doing just that.But electroacoustic/computer composers are not as in demand as chefs are, and theiringredients and preparations areentirely alien to all but other chefs and a spare fewpatrons.

Many composerslike it that way. The chef or composer or artist who is only patronizedby the few and does not walk out into the wider world risks nothing. It is easy to say, “mywork can only be appreciated properly under the conditions I set.” That is safe. One canalso be assured that it will not likely be a failure because first, the composer is amongpolite colleagues and second, the spare audience has invested in hearing the performanceand it would self-reflect poorly on their choice to believe it a failure. In suchcircumstances, one cannot know, one cannot grow, but one can move forward confidentlyamong one’s own. Yet, conversely and confoundingly, somehow fine work shinesthrough bad recordings and reproductions (who can fail to be astounded atGesang derJünglingeunder its haze of tape hiss?), and can be heard or seen through the cloud ofinterference that I outlined in an earlier post. Is an mp3 version a fair test? Yes, I think so.It is one view of the work, indeed a better view than most uncontrolled circumstances aregoing to offer you. It is the varnishing of the Michelangelo, the nasality of the Toscanini,the flickering of the Eisenstein (while even the finest production studios and their legionsof artists can give us high-fidelity, high-definition Milli Vanilli, Elvis on black velvet,andNightmare on Elm Street VII).

My MP3.com CDs

Conclusion: You Have Been Assimilated

So Eric Lyon asked about being an independent computer musician. And there are thestages of denial, anger, and resignation. The independent computer musician ultimatelydoes become a lame Star Trek joke, and I reiterate: I’m acomposer.I use a computer.Who doesn’t?

It has been the natural evolutionary course in the past quarter-century, and now everymusician—even those who tune their 17th century violins to a little box—has beenassimilated into the active use of computers, to becoming computer musicians.

_________________

Notes: Compositions using computers and the roles computers played; this does notinclude scoring or mixing:

Rando’s Poetic License(1978) — control/interaction/performanceCruise(1982) — control/performanceBugs(1982) — control/performanceNighthawk(1985) — realtime sound/control/interactionEcho(1985) — realtime sound/control/interaction/performanceIn Bocca al Lupo(1986) — control/evaluation/sound/interaction/environmentPianaroll (1988) — control/performanceA Time Machine(1990) — control/interaction/performanceWolf5(1991) — control/evaluation/sound/interaction/environment/performanceParty Musik(1993) — fixed sound/layeringHypertunes, Baby(1994) — fixed sound/performanceFor the Invisible(1994) — fixed sound/controlXirx (1996) — realtime sound/control/interaction/performancezéyu, quânh, sweeh(1996) — fixed sound/manipulationexirxion(1996) — fixed sound/manipulationDetritus of Mating(1997) — fixed progressive sound/manipulation/environmentZonule Glaes II(1999) — fixed sound/manipulation/performancebellyloops(1999) — fixed sound/manipulationNo Money (Lullaby for Bill)(1999) — fixed sound/manipulationRatGeyser(2000) — fixed sound/manipulation/performanceFreeSimple(2000) — fixed sound/manipulationSnare:Wilding(2000) — fixed sound/manipulationGlossalalia 15(2000) — fixed sound/manipulationBorn Again (Williams Mix)(2000) — fixed sound/manipulation/performanceHighBirds (Prime)(2001) — fixed sound/manipulation/performance