Spring 2015 Music Research Seminar Series: Dr Michael Edwards (University of Edinburgh)

Spring 2015 Music Research Seminar Series: Dr Michael Edwards (University of Edinburgh)
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This is a past event

Title:slippery chicken - an open-source Common Lisp environment for declarative or generative algorithmic compositionAbstract:"slippery chicken" is an open-source Common Lisp environment for declarative or generative algorithmic composition building on CLM, CMN, CM, and Lilypond for score, sound file, and/or MIDI file outputs and the integration of these into closely aligned hybrid acoustic-electronic pieces of music."slippery chicken" enables a top-down approach to music composition. The software was originally tailor-made to encapsulate the author's personal composition techniques, however many general-purpose algorithmic composition tools have been programmed that should be useful to a range of composers. The main goal of the project is to facilitate a melding of electronic and instrumental sound worlds, not just at the sonic but also at the structural level. Pure instrumental or electronic composition is of course possible too. Techniques for the innovative combination of rhythm and pitch data--arguably one of the most difficult aspects of making convincing musical algorithms--are offered. "slippery chicken" has no graphical user interface and there are no plans to make one. Whilst it is clear that this will be off-putting to some, there are many benefits to interacting with such a system through the programming language it was created in, not least of which is the infinite-extensibility that such an approach infers.People interested in this might want to look at the associated website in advance: www.michael-edwards.org/sc

Speaker
Dr Michael Edwards
Hosted by
Department of Music, School of Education
Venue
MR055, MacRobert Building
Contact

Free and open to the public