What does it mean to speak of tele-media as a musical instrument? The unfolding of this question is aided by analysis of the control domains of two existing instrument categories, acoustic instruments and digital controllers. Design criteria for making tele-media instruments are formulated thence, and also from consideration of the special capacity of tele-media to bring together multi-lateral non-proximate control sources. Such design anticipates musicians in different continents participating in single sonic outcomes. What does it mean for such a tele-instrument to facilitate virtuosic performance? Any high standard of instrument making urges that instrument makers do so. Virtuosity is understood in partas performance presence, an important issue for tele-media criticism. The broader topic concerning the relation between presence and transmission is represented narrowly here in a single argument. Transmission of performance intention is more important to remote performance presence than literal representations of musicians on stage. Performance presence is better facilitated by interactive graphic notations that dynamically render control domain data into images. Two tele-performances inform the discussion.
Telemusic and Instrument Making.
Organized Sound Volume 17 (Issue 01, Networked Electroacoustic Music), published by Cambridge University Press
Daystar Music Pedagogy: Three Unit Types.
Starting in 2012 I was given a rare opportunity to develop a music program of my own. The basic idea was how to make a signature program where music can flourish with few resources. Quite possible up to a point. This document is a presentation I gave to some teachers. But it is more than that. It is a map, a result of pathfinding, and also some provisional conclusions; those of a journeyman musician given the privilege of teaching children on his own terms, based on his own experience. The beginning of a longer story concerning what music is.
Cilia: Aspiring to Virtuosic Control Design
Abstract
This paper profiles some conclusions from several years of performing with and programming for the Cilia, a new flute controller. One condition for virtuosic music controller performance is able and responsive hardware. However, it has been proposed before that control data routing and network design plays a more crucial role in meeting the objective of creating a controller which can facilitate high degrees of dexterity and nuance in controller performance. This paper endeavors to support and amplify this proposition in two ways. First, reference to the control domain of acoustic instruments is instructive for articulating design strategies and criteria for control network design. Second, novel concepts of control are thereby idenitfied, contextualized within a theory of wholes and parts, and shown in their implementation in the Cilia application software. This paper contributes to broader discussion by providing a conceptual tool box, tools useful in both descriptition and prescriptition.