Sonic Writing: Technologies of Material, Symbolic, and Signal Inscriptions

Description

Sonic Writing explores how contemporary music technologies trace their ancestry to previous forms of instruments and media. Studying the domains of instrument design, musical notation, and sound recording under the rubrics of material, symbolic, and signal inscriptions of sound, the book describes how these historical techniques of sonic writing are implemented in new digital music technologies. With a scope ranging from ancient Greek music theory, medieval notation, early modern scientific instrumentation to contemporary multimedia and artificial intelligence, it provides a theoretical grounding for further study and development of technologies of musical expression. The book draws a bespoke affinity and similarity between current musical practices and those from before the advent of notation and recording, stressing the importance of instrument design in the study of new music and projecting how new computational technologies, including machine learning, will transform our musical practices. Sonic Writing offers a richly illustrated study of contemporary musical media, where interactivity, artificial intelligence, and networked devices disclose new possibilities for musical expression. Thor Magnusson provides a conceptual framework for the creation and analysis of this new musical work, arguing that contemporary sonic writing becomes a new form of material and symbolic design--one that is bound to be ephemeral, a system of fluid objects where technologies are continually redesigned in a fast cycle of innovation. Cover page Halftitle page Title page Copyright page Contents Figures Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: On Objects, Humans, and Machines The non-origins of music Mnemotechnics and music Three music technological epistemes Unstable objects Ergodynamics Book structure Part I Material Inscriptions 1 Instrumentality Musical organa Instruments in myth and philosophy Instruments in medieval thought Instruments of modernity Instrumental materialities Conclusion 2 New Instruments Instruments and alien objects Interfacing sound The Karlax The LinnStrument Resonating acoustic instruments Digital affordances Instrument or controller? Conclusion 3 Epistemic Tools Instruments for thinking Theoretical instruments Instrumental agency Epistemic tools Material affordances Conclusion 4 Digital Organology Evolutionary organology Musical organics New instruments, new ideas, new instruments Conclusion Part II Symbolic Inscriptions 5 Writing Music On writing On the possibility of writing sound Symbols notating music Guido of Arezzo Mnemonics and notation Conclusion 6 Printing Music The printing press Musica poetica Music as (re)search The musical work Conclusion 7 New Languages Descriptive and prescriptive notation Notating for (human) machines Open notations Graphic scores Multimedia notation Rules and process Improvisation and the aleatoric The cost of freedom Conclusion 8 Machine Notation Algorithmic music Combinatorics and creativity Compose a system and run it Generative music Musicology of code and systems Modular systems Conclusion Part III Signal Inscriptions 9 Inscribing Sound Notating what? Mechanical writing Sonic pens The phonograph Crossing the epistemic gap Conclusion 10 Recording The seeds of an industry Phonography as production method Critical studies of the phonograph Writing sound Sound as compositional material Real or synthetic sound? Phonographic writing as the condition of jazz Ontology of the recorded work Conclusion 11 Analysing Interpreting signals Objective notation with the Melograph Analysis of music through visual means The notational quality of the sonic spectrum Instruments for seeing sound Conclusion 12 Machine Listening What to listen for? Machine listening Cutting sound up into databases Conclusion Part IV Digital Writing 13 Transductions Wherein lies knowledge? Instruments as media and objects of resistance Embodied musial gestures Ergomimetics Ergomimetic interfaces Conclusion 14 New Notations Writing on fluid formats A piece or an instrument? Music as invention Semiotics of notation for new instruments Composing for digital instruments New notations Live coding Characteristics of postlinear work Conclusion 15 Machine Writing Transforming rules Machine as a human extension Generative music A form without a format Systematic musicology of systems Composers as programmers User-generated music Deep learning in music Conclusion 16 Music in Multimedia Computational thinking in multimedia The invention is the work New platforms for invention Music in other realities Sound art as music Conclusion Part V Conclusion 17 A Future of Music Tech The system of the crowd Industry developments: a case study Shift ing models, but who shifts? Conclusion 18 Transformation of Tradition Where is the new stuff? From consumption to production Composition and system Conclusion 19 New Education for New Music New terms for new practices Music education in the future How to teach invention? Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index