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Theelectroacousticcommunity
LeighLandy
OrganisedSound/Volume2/Issue01/April1997,pp13
DOI:null,Publishedonline:08September2000

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LeighLandy(1997).Theelectroacousticcommunity.OrganisedSound,2,pp13
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EDITORIAL
The electroacoustic community

The theme chosen for Vol. 2 No 1 of Organised Sound

is one which the editors hope will become a thread
for future issues. The reader may be curious why this
subject has been chosen.
Only too often in literature concerning music technology are aspects of formalism concerning a given
development at the focus of an article. This is obviously part of our means of sharing knowledge and
equally clearly one of this journals key purposes.
However, this sharing of pure description is but one
part, be it a major one, of the whole. In music technology, as in so many areas, there is a tendency to
discover, sometimes with little or no idea of a potential application. The difference between pure and
applied mathematics comes to mind. Yet after almost
half a century of rapid growth, music technology
might be said to be suffering from too many schemes
and not enough truly beta-tested applications.
A similar tale can be told of a good deal of music
that has been generated using new music technological developments. It is no secret how marginal contemporary music (read: contemporary art music) and
especially electroacoustic music (in the broadest
sense) within contemporary music remain. This
brings to mind the question of what todays musician
is trying to communicate. Which community is this
musician (or developer) trying to address? Which
community is the writer submitting a text to Organised Sound trying to address? Does a good formalism make a good piece?
These last two paragraphs are quite dependent on
one another. If developments take place without an
obvious application, or even an obvious way to find
an application, if todays musician is not terribly concerned with the reception of his or her work, are
those involved with music technology interested in
community at all?
One might consider part of the cultural background of this somewhat curious state of affairs.
Since the 1970s in many a Western society the
accomplishment and uniqueness of the individual has
represented an important means of measuring ones
success. This general tendency is in shrill contrast to
the traditional notion that music is a collective art.
Yet it is odd to note that sometimes there are even

jealousies or loss of respect when an individuals

work is accepted in wider circles. One is said to sell
out to ones public. This is, of course, a black-andwhite view of how one can look at todays apparent
lack of community.
Still, things are not that black-and-white after all.
The International Computer Music Association
(ICMA) holds an annual conference that brings
together a community of computer music enthusiasts
from a number of nations, backgrounds and interests.
The ICMA represents a community. There are
others, some of which are represented in the current
issue of this journal.
Staying with this one example for a moment, it has
often been said that the ICMC meetings, the conferences of the ICMA, are inward looking; that is, they
address the work of a community of developers, artists and colleagues in allied sciences and keep a finger
on the pulse of development. A theme that is given
relatively little attention at these meetings concerns
sharing the wares of music technology for people outside the ICMA circles. (The circle includes members
of the ICMA and other specialists in higher education
and their students, as well as those working in
important research centres, such as IRCAM in Paris.)
One would think with so many exciting developments taking place, including high-quality works
known by very few, that such organisations would
try to organise a lobby to attempt to share the wealth.
A more down-to-earth option, quite well known in
the United Kingdom, is to spend time, outside of
ones main work, offering educational projects and
training, tickling the fancy of those who might not
even know of the existence of this field. This type of
outreach work is known in Britain as community
art, perhaps a misnomer as the community attending
nineteenth century opera is just as valid as the ones
involved in community art.
DEFINING COMMUNITY
Perhaps at this juncture it might be worthwhile to
define the word community. I shall draw from a
definition I have used previously. A community is a
group with one or more similar interests, however

Organised Sound 2(1): 13 1997 Cambridge University Press. Printed in the United Kingdom.

Editorial

large or small scale. A community may be local or

spread out nationally or even internationally. Internet communities interested in a specific aspect of
music technology illustrate the latter. What a community is not is a single person working in isolation,
an all-too-common occurrence now that virtually
everything is available to the individual at home.
SHARING OUR WARES
Returning to the second and third interlinked paragraphs above, the subject of community essentially
embraces the offering of the application of our work
in music technology with the group with whom we
would like to share our results, be they in the form
of an algorithm, an interactive system, a musical
composition or whatever.
One of Organised Sounds principles is that its submissions not only describe a technological development or artefact, but that they address readers in
both fields of music and of music technology. By
bridging this gap two communities can converge. As
a consequence of this policy, it is hoped that writers
take the time not only to address the whats and
hows of their systems or works, but also address
the whys of the same allowing the reader to better
understand the application or motivating drive for
this work. The more this type of information, also a
form of knowledge, is shared, the easier it will be to
enlarge the community of those interested in the field,
as the knowledge will then become more accessible.
(This sentence has been written based on the premise
that one does not want to confine his or her work to
an inward-looking circle. Organised Sound is not the
ideal publication for such people anyway.) It is with
this in mind that this theme of community deserves
to be profiled from time to time. In consequence, the
journal is founded on the notion of addressing communities and potential communities in music technology in the widest sense.
It must be admitted that many working in the field
are not used to spending a good deal of time putting
the why view into words. Composers are often
especially modest or at least hesitant to do so. But
when hearing a work, is it the formalism, which is
easier put into words, that one needs to know more
about, or is it a more perceptible driving (musical)
force, or both? Furthermore, today many non-musical phenomena such as neural nets and patterns
derived from genetics are applied to musical structure. Is it apparent that such phenomena are relevant
to our field? If there are any doubts, or alternatively
if there are any strong opinions why this might be so,
these need to be shared along with the system created
involving these new musical formulae.
It is important to mention, as many readers are
aware, that the field of music analysis is undergoing

great changes. The omnipotence of musical text is in

question. The role of the interpreter and, perhaps
more importantly, the listener are being increasingly
taken into account. Any music technology system is
developed inevitably to make music. What are the
expectations of such systems in terms of the listening
experience? Listeners, of course, do form communities. By the way, communication, a part of any musical work, and community have the same etymological
root. Our theme of community needs to take into
account aspects of reception and execution of work
involving music technology.
THE OPPORTUNITY OFFERED BY
CONVERGENCE
An exciting aspect of this theme can be found in the
fact that there are signs of convergence on the horizon concerning a number of areas, two of which
deserve attention here: convergence between music
technological developments in a variety of contemporary musics, and similarly between the music of
choice in establishments of higher education and
major music technology centres. In both cases, the
mutual exclusivity of and distance between popular
musics and contemporary art music are diminishing.
For decades music technological developments
were led primarily by people involved in contemporary music. Since the arrival of MIDI, it seems that
pop music technology has seemed to be in the forefront in general. Today, the sampler exemplifies a
form of hardware potentially of interest to all. This
holds true for digital mixing and sound manipulation
environments as well. The Canadian, John Oswald
of plunderphonics fame (infamy?), is an individual
respected in both electroacoustic contemporary music
fields as well as in the area of experimentation in
popular music.
Similarly the number of popular music (technology) courses appearing in higher education is inevitably increasing, reflecting educations desire to climb
down from its ivory tower to an extent and address
the needs of todays and tomorrows world more
directly. This refocusing of education has allowed the
chance for musicians coming from a diversity of
backgrounds to encounter each others creative and
technological developments, which in turn is catalysing a greater communication between what have traditionally been disjointed communities.
Again, Organised Sound has been developed to
interest readers coming from a diversity of backgrounds in the hope that developments can be shared
and that there can be more cross-talk (in the positive
sense) between traditionally separate interest groups
in the future.
Surely with the very wide selection of music made
today in our post-modern consumer society, most

musicians would ideally like their listeners to come

not only from an inward-looking small circle or from
one school of listening, but also from other areas
than the one that they represent. Therefore the notion
of interlinking communities arises.
INTERLINKING COMMUNITIES
Ironically, it often seems as if it is hard to keep up to
date with music and music technological developments internationally, as there is so much going on.
Organised Sound believes in introducing the work of
individuals to a wide readership in the hope of
spreading knowledge and interlinking communities.
To illustrate this convergence notion, it would come
as no surprise to this writer that figures making bedroom techno these days have more in common with
the 1990s version of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) musique concre`te composers than either
group would think. There are currently very few
occasions where such musicians and developers can
meet. By choosing this theme as an ongoing area of
concentration, this journal intends to play a major
role in interlinking communities whilst supporting
convergence.

Netherlands Coenen, Finland Kuljuntausta), two

international (Electronic Music Foundationydiffusion of information Chadabe, Composers Desktop
Projectysharing of software development Endrich),
one concerning the digital community of CD-ROM
artists (Burns), one considering educational applications of Iannis Xenakis UPIC system (Nelson),
and one concerning a more philosophical view of the
electroacoustic music community (Richard). These
submissions already demonstrate how wide the field
is. We hope to hear from other voices in these and
other communities in the future. Ideally by sharing
what you, the reader, represent, more can participate
in the sharing. Music, at the end of the day, was an
art of sharing long before music technology could be
plugged in the wall. Organised Sound would like to
play the role of mail box for those interested in offering more knowledge than a formal description, more
information than a spec sheet, to music technology
communities around the world. This issues Student
Article is its Tutorial Article as well. Odilon Marcenaro compares two programs that are useful in algorithmic composition contexts, MAX and Tabula
Vigilans.
Leigh Landy

THIS THEME IN THE CURRENT ISSUE

AND BEYOND
There are seven contributions concerning the theme
of community in the present issue: two national (The

This editorial expresses the view of its author and is

not a statement of editorial policy.