The art of music is no longer limited to the sounding models of instruments and voices. Electoacoustic music opens access to all sounds, a bewildering sonic array ranging from the real to the surreal and beyond. For listeners the traditional links with physical sound-making are frequently ruptured: electroacoustic sound-shapes and qualities frequently do not indicate known sources and causes. Gone are the familiar articulations of instruments and vocal utterance: gone is the stability of note and interval: gone too is the reference of beat and metre. Composers also have problems: how to cut an aesthetic path and discover a stability in a wide-open sound world, how to develop appropriate sound-making methods, how to select technologies and software.

Existing audio tools handle the increasing amount of computer audio data inadequately. The typical tape-recorder paradigm for audio interfaces is inflexible and time consuming, especially for large data sets. On the other hand, completely automatic audio analysis and annotation is impossible using current techniques. Alternative solutions are semi-automatic user interfaces that let users interact with sound in flexible ways based on content. This approach offers significant advantages over manual browsing, annotation and retrieval. Furthermore, it can be implemented using existing techniques for audio content analysis in restricted domains. This paper describes MARSYAS, a framework for experimenting, evaluating and integrating such techniques. As a test for the architecture, some recently proposed techniques have been implemented and tested. In addition, a new method for temporal segmentation based on audio texture is described. This method is combined with audio analysis techniques and used for hierarchical browsing, classification and annotation of audio files.

Seeking new forms of expression in computer music, a small number of laptop composers are braving the challenges of coding music on the fly. Not content to submit meekly to the rigid interfaces of performance software like Ableton Live or Reason, they work with programming languages, building their own custom software, tweaking or writing the programs themselves as they perform. Often this activity takes place within some established language for computer music like SuperCollider, but there is no reason to stop errant minds pursuing their innovations in general scripting languages like Perl. This paper presents an introduction to the field of live coding, of real-time scripting during laptop music performance, and the improvisatory power and risks involved. We look at two test cases, the command-line music of slub utilising, amongst a grab-bag of technologies, Perl and REALbasic, and Julian Rohrhuber's Just In Time library for SuperCollider. We try to give a flavour of an exciting but hazardous world at the forefront of live laptop performance.

1. EXPLORING THE CONNECTION

The term soundscape composition did not exist when I started composing with environmental sounds in the mid-1970s. Through a variety of fortunate circumstances and because of what the 1970s were in Vancouver and Canada - artistically inspiring and moneys were available for adventurous and culturally, socially, politically progressive projects - I had discovered that environmental sounds were the perfect compositional ‘language’ for me. I had learnt much while working with the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University, about listening, about the properties of sound, about noise, the issues we face regarding the quality of the sound environment and much more. This in combination with learning to record and to work with analog technology in the sonic studio allowed me to speak with sound in a way I found irresistible. In addition, the start-up of Vancouver Co-operative Radio gave us the - at that time rare - opportunity to broadcast our work. It was a place where cultural exploration and political activism could meet. It was from within this exciting context of ecological concern for the soundscape and the availability of an alternate media outlet that my compositional work - now often called soundscape composition - emerged. And it came as a surprise to me, as I had never thought of composing nor of broadcasting as a professional choice in my life.

Since telecommunication can never equal the richness of face-to-face interaction on its own terms, the most interesting examples of networked music go beyond the paradigm of musicians playing together in a virtual room. The Open Sound Control protocol has facilitated dozens of such innovative networked music projects. First the protocol itself is described, followed by some theoretical limits on communication latency and what they mean for music making. Then a representative list of some of the projects that take advantage of the protocol is presented, describing each project in terms of the paradigm of musical interaction that it provides.

One of the most remarkable achievements of Pierre Schaeffer's musical thought is his proposal of the sonorous object as the focus of research. The sonorous object is a fragment of sound, typically in the range of a few seconds (often even less), perceived as a unit. Sonorous objects are constituted, studied, and evaluated according to various criteria, and sonorous objects that are found suitable are regarded as musical objects that may be used in musical composition. In the selection and qualification of these sonorous objects, we are encouraged to practise what Schaeffer called ‘reduced listening’, meaning disregarding the original context of the sound, including its source and signification, and instead focus our listening on the sonorous features.

However, it can be argued that this principle of ‘reduced listening’ is not in conflict with more fundamental principles of embodied cognition, and that the criteria for the constitution, and the various feature qualifications, of sonorous objects can be linked to gestural images. Also, there are several similarities between studying sound and gestures from a phenomenological perspective, and it is suggested that Schaeffer's theoretical concepts may be extended to what is called gestural-sonorous objects.

The analytical discussion of acousmatic music can benefit from being based on spatial concepts, and this article aims to provide a framework for investigation. A personal experience of soundscape listening is the starting point, and uncovers basic ideas relating to the disposition and behaviour of sounding content, and listening strategy. This enables the opening out of the discussion to include source-bonded sounds in general, giving particular consideration to how experience of sense modes other than the aural are implicated in our understanding of space, and in acousmatic listening. Attention then shifts to a source-bonded spatial model based on the production of space by the gestural activity of music performance, prior to focusing in more detail on acousmatic music, initially by delving into spectral space, where ideas about gravitation and diagonal forces are germane. This leads to concepts central to the structuring of perspectival space in relation to the vantage point of the listener. The final section considers a methodology for space-form investigation.

This paper explores the differences in the design and performance of acoustic and new digital musical instruments, arguing that with the latter there is an increased encapsulation of musical theory. The point of departure is the phenomenology of musical instruments, which leads to the exploration of designed artefacts as extensions of human cognition – as scaffolding onto which we delegate parts of our cognitive processes. The paper succinctly emphasises the pronounced epistemic dimension of digital instruments when compared to acoustic instruments. Through the analysis of material epistemologies it is possible to describe the digital instrument as an epistemic tool: a designed tool with such a high degree of symbolic pertinence that it becomes a system of knowledge and thinking in its own terms. In conclusion, the paper rounds up the phenomenological and epistemological arguments, and points at issues in the design of digital musical instruments that are germane due to their strong aesthetic implications for musical culture.

This paper considers the issues involved in the design of electronic and computer interfaces, specifically mapping - the designed link between an instrument's playing interface and its sound source. It defines the problem area, reviews the literature, and gives examples of specific system mappings. A general model is presented, with the aim of providing a framework for future discussions on what makes an effective mapping. Several guidelines for mapping strategies are given, based on existing work.

This paper takes a systemic perspective on interactive signal processing and introduces the author's Audible Eco-Systemic Interface (AESI) project. It starts with a discussion of the paradigm of ‘interaction’ in existing computer music and live electronics approaches, and develops following bio-cybernetic principles such as ‘system/ambience coupling’, ‘noise’, and ‘self-organisation’. Central to the paper is an understanding of ‘interaction’ as a network of interdependencies among system components, and as a means for dynamical behaviour to emerge upon the contact of an autonomous system (e.g. a DSP unit) with the external environment (room or else hosting the performance). The author describes the design philosophy in his current work with the AESI (whose DSP component was implemented as a signal patch in KYMA5.2), touching on compositional implications (not only live electronics situations, but also sound installations).

We define a two-axis transparency framework that can be used as a predictor of the expressivity of a musical device. One axis is the player's transparency scale, while the other is the audience's transparency scale. Through consideration of both traditional instruments and new technology-driven interfaces, we explore the role that metaphor plays in developing expressive devices. Metaphor depends on a literature, which forms the basis for making transparent device mappings. We examine four examples of systems that use metaphor: Iamascope, Sound Sculpting, MetaMuse and Glove-TalkII; and discuss implications on transparency and expressivity. We believe this theory provides a framework for design and evaluation of new human–machine and human–human interactions, including musical instruments.

Most scholars writing on the use of samplers express anxiety over the dissolution of boundaries between human-generated and automated musical expression, and focus on the copyright infringement issues surrounding sampling practices without adequately exploring samplists' musical and political goals. Drawing on musical examples from various underground electronic music genres and on interviews with electronic musicians, this essay addresses such questions as: What is a sampler, and how does the sampling process resonate with or diverge from other traditions of instrument-playing? How do electronic musicians use the ‘automated’ mechanisms of digital instruments to achieve nuanced musical expression and cultural commentary? What are some political implications of presenting sampled and processed sounds in a reconfigured compositional environment? By exploring these issues, I hope to counter the over-simplified, uninformed critical claims that sampling is a process of ‘theft’ and ‘automation’, and instead offer insight into the myriad and complex musical and political dimensions of sampling in electronic music production.

The soundscape composition, as pioneered at Simon Fraser University since the early 1970s, has evolved rapidly to explore a full range of approaches from the ‘found sound’ representation of acoustic environments through to the incorporation of highly abstracted sonic transformations. The structural approaches similarly range from being analogues of real-world experience, such as listening from a fixed spatial perspective or moving through a connected series of acoustic spaces, to those that mirror both nonlinear mental experiences of memory recall, dreams, and free association, as well as artificial sonic constructs made familiar and possible by modern ‘schizophonic’ audio techniques of sonic layering and embedding. The octophonic surround-sound playback format as used in contemporary soundscape presentations has achieved a remarkable sense of immersion in a recreated or imaginary sonic environment. Specific works realised at SFU are analysed that illustrate each of these approaches.

Despite roots in acoustic ecology and soundscape studies, the practice and study of soundscape composition is often grouped with, or has grown out of the acousmatic music tradition. This can be observed in the positioning of soundscape compositions juxtaposed with acousmatic music compositions in concert programmes, CD compilations and university syllabuses. Not only does this positioning inform how soundscape composition is listened to, but also how it is produced, sonically and philosophically. If the making and presenting of representations of environmental sound is of fundamental concern to the soundscape artist, then it must be addressed. As this methodological issue is outside of previous musical concerns, to this degree, we must look to other disciplines that are primarily engaged with the making of representation, and that have thoroughly questioned what it is to make and present representations in the world today. One such discipline is ethnography. After briefly charting the genesis of soundscape composition and its underlying principles and motivations, the rest of the paper will present and develop one perspective, that of considering soundscape composition as ethnography.

The work of Pierre Schaeffer (theorist, composer and inventor of musique concrète) bears a complex relationship to the philosophical school of phenomenology. Although often seen as working at the periphery of this movement, this paper argues that Schaeffer's effort to ground musical works in a ‘hybrid discipline’ is quite orthodox, modelled upon Husserl's foundational critique of both ‘realism’ and ‘psychologism’. As part of this orthodoxy, Schaeffer develops his notion of the ‘sound object’ along essentialist (eidetic) lines. This has two consequences: first, an emphasis is placed on ‘reduced listening’ over indicative and communicative modes of listening; secondly, the ‘sound object’ promotes an ahistorical ontology of musical material and technology. Despite frequent references to Schaeffer and the ‘sound object’ in recent literature on networked music, concatenative synthesis and high-level music descriptors, the original phenomenological context in which Schaeffer's work developed is rarely revisited. By critically exploring Schaeffer's theorising of the ‘sound object’, this paper aims at articulating the distance between contemporary and historical usage of the term.

This essay develops an ontology of sound and argues that sound art plays a crucial role in revealing this ontology. I argue for a conception of sound as a continuous, anonymous flux to which human expressions contribute but which precedes and exceeds these expressions. Developing Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s conception of the perceptual unconscious, I propose that this sonic flux is composed of two dimensions: a virtual dimension that I term ‘noise’ and an actual dimension that consists of contractions of this virtual continuum: for example, music and speech. Examining work by Max Neuhaus, Chris Kubick, Francisco Lopez and others, I suggest that the richest works of sound art help to disclose the virtual dimension of sound and its process of actualisation.

There are two distinct types of creativity: the flash out of the blue (inspiration? genius?), and the process of incremental revisions (hard work). Not only are we years away from modelling the former, we do not even begin to understand it. The latter is algorithmic in nature and has been modelled in many systems both musical and non-musical. Algorithmic composition is as old as music composition. It is often considered a cheat, a way out when the composer needs material and/or inspiration. It can also be thought of as a compositional tool that simply makes the composer’s work go faster. This article makes a case for algorithmic composition as such a tool. The ‘hard work’ type of creativity often involves trying many different combinations and choosing one over the others. It seems natural to express this iterative task as a computer algorithm. The implementation issues can be reduced to two components: how to understand one’s own creative process well enough to reproduce it as an algorithm, and how to program a computer to differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ music. The philosophical issues reduce to the question who or what is responsible for the music produced?

The author covers the background of soundscape composition, as initiated by the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University, and soundscape documentation as an activity that is being increasingly practised worldwide. Today there are two striking manifestations of this work: the increasing globalisation of the electroacoustic community, and the increasing sophistication of digital techniques applied to soundscape composition. In addition, the tradition of listening to environmental soundscapes as if they were music is inverted to suggest listening to electroacoustic music as if it were soundscape. What analytical tools and insights would result? The theoretical concepts introduced in soundscape studies and acoustic communication are summarised and applied first to media and digital gaming environments, noting the extensions of both their sound worlds and the related listening attitudes they provoke in terms of analytical and distracted listening. Traditional approaches to acousmatic and soundscape analysis are compared for their commonalities and differences, the latter being mainly their relative balance of attention towards inner and outer complexity. The types of electroacoustic music most amenable to a soundscape based analysis are suggested, along with brief examples of pieces to which such analysis might be directed.

This article is part of PhD research dealing with gender issues in electroacoustic music, focusing on the voice. The first part of the article begins with a discussion of the musical material under research. Thereafter follows an elaborate overview of the number of male and female composers, vocalists and recorded voices in several series of CDs of electroacoustic and computer music. The gendered roles of the live, pre-recorded and synthesised voices are discussed and the musical couple of the male composer and the female vocalist emerges. The second part touches upon several issues raised by the results of part one: the roles of the performer and the composer, (dis)embodiment, femininity and technology. This is a preview into some of the remaining research. In section 2, other music than the CD series of section 1 is discussed as well. The gender patterns are interpreted in a broader context. The role of the female vocalist is many sided. Cyborg voices relate to old patterns as well as new possibilities.

We introduce a system for generalised sound classification and similarity using a machine-learning framework. Applications of the system include automatic classification of environmental sounds, musical instruments, music genre and human speakers. In addition to classification, the system may also be used for computing similarity metrics between a target sound and other sounds in a database. We discuss the use of hidden Markov models for representing the temporal evolution of audio spectra and present results of testing the system on classification and retrieval tasks. The system has been incorporated into the MPEG-7 international standard for multimedia content description and is therefore publicly available in the form of a set of standardised interfaces and software reference tools for developers and researchers.