#Computer Music

[digitalfossils]

[zef-zef]

Jessica Ekomane - Manifolds (Portraits GRM, 2024)

Composed and produced by Jessica Ekomane (2022) Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, Berlin, May 2023 Photo by Camille Blake Sleeve design by Stephen O’Malley

[michaelgogins]

Barry Vercoe (24 July 1937 – 16 June 2025)

I will not recapitulate what others have said in tribute to Barry Vercoe. You can read the Wikipedia article, or Richard Boulanger’s tribute (which is quoted in full here), or look at Barry’s old home page at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or read his New Zealand obituary.

Here I will offer my personal thanks to Barry for creating what, in my considered opinion, is one of the best musical instruments in history — Csound. I use it for almost all of my musical compositions.

There are now other systems, such as Max or Supercollider, that can do all, or almost all, of what Csound does. However, Csound came first, and is an ancestor of these systems. For at least some composers, such as myself, Csound is still easier to use, and perhaps more powerful. And just because it is older, Csound has the huge advantage of a very large base of running musical examples and pieces.

Here I will also offer my appreciation of Barry’s design choices and his implementation of Csound. My appreciation is based on my own experience, not only as an intensive user, but also as a sometime member of the Csound development team, when I contributed a number of features to Csound and came to understand Barry’s outstanding ability as a computer programmer.

There are some things I definitely do not like about the Csound code, mainly the cryptic names, and the use of preprocessor macros. Aside from that, here are a few of the good things in Barry’s code:

Of course the big home run was writing Csound in platform-neutral C, still the most performant programming language, and still available on more platforms than any other.

The extreme simplicity and efficiency of the inner loop for running Csound performances.

Invisible, automatic handling of multiple notes playing at the same time, for the same instrument.

The extremely flexible design for unit generators (opcodes), the building blocks of sound synthesis. Essentially, although written in C, Barry’s unit generators are classes -- data structures that derive from a virtual base class, and include methods for operating on their own data. The virtual base class idea makes it quite easy to extend Csound with new unit generators, and now even plugin unit generators.

The musical power and flexibility of Csound’s score language, which permits the user to define any set of fields for an event; and these fields are not limited to integer values, but are real numbers. Furthermore, based on his experience as a composer, Barry made sure his score language could handle tied notes, polyphony, changes of tempo, and so on. This is far more powerful than MIDI.

The policy of complete backwards compatibility. The very first examples and compositions still run on today's Csound!

Based on Barry's foundation, the current implementation of Csound (far more capable than the original) remains highly efficient, flexible, and easy to extend.

[trashpandaqc]

new & unreleased tracks from me and enn{kdog in the latest Fractal Meat and Highpoint Lowlife podcast. listen back for all kinds of textural goodness!

[everchangingform]

been a year since I made a spacehey

updated it yesterday

[xaferiax]

NEW SONG "START THE PARTY!" OUT NOW FREE ON BANDCAMP FROM MY NEW PROJECT "Sleep Electric" :)

[sjwallin]

My original retro video game music for the in-progress game “Jump Arcade” releases this Friday!

This collection includes a fresh new mastering for old tracks, an extended version for a couple other tracks... and a whole NEW track!

Pre-save it now at https://ffm.to/jumparcade or pre-order it on Bandcamp at https://sarahwallinhuff.bandcamp.com/album/jump-arcade

👾����🕹️🎶

[jsoliday]

I've got a new track out today on this comp, along with thirty other artists remixing Farmersmanual's nullgera​̈​t Listen to the entire comp here: https://tokinogake.bandcamp.com/album/nullger-t-remixes

and the original Farmersmanual source: https://tokinogake.bandcamp.com/album/nullgera-t

[tootiofficial]

Hey here is the official cover art of my new album "Welcome To Tooti Music" wich is coming out soon! True fans are gonna love it!

[personaproductions]

Thanks for listening 👂🏼 it actually means a lot to me and my self esteem. People want authenticity imma be authentic, I had no clue I was gonna make this song, I’m pretty sure I got inspired while organizing my samples library. Then basically made this over 10 hours and then just listened to it daily for weeks in my opinion that means it had banger qualities. So I hope you can enjoy it as much as I do and dance your hearts out.

[campariqueen]

want 2 support a trans gener electronic musician ?? listen 2 my new song plzzz

[zef-zef]

Bjarni Gunnarsson - Upics (Flag Day Recordings, 2023)

All the source material has been created with the UPIC system (Iannis Xenakis) a graphical computer system where users draw shapes, waveforms, and modulations on ‘pages’ that form a composition or composed sound.

[trashpandaqc]

ripping myself off: a playlist of tracks I've released in multiple versions

lost gnome (Plain Music Compilation) vs This Is Going (Bonus Jump)

hdonkx49A/B (ET Mulch Madness) = loose remake of an hoyondonkx (Sinkhole Racer 2015 2010 2017)

colorful666 (nice mix) (Is Under Location Surfaces) vs colorful666 (fall folded)

agile nester pm & ws var q (Bonus Jump) vs Dicey & el pío (Jumps 19)

vy, fReet- (Jumps 19) vs sip from boat ytuality (Hyperchaos Vol 1)

Eels Repeating (Hack The Planet Vol 2) vs hollows (s:t ~ray)

b wave (-1) (s:t ~ray) vs Obwave (Dropup)

everything on Shape Variations vs everything on Out Of Shape

plus too many alternative live takes to mention on Additions Megabus, Warmup Clips 2012-2015, and various recorded live sets

[spaceintruderdetector]

How a team of musicians, engineers, computer scientists, and psychologists developed computer music as an academic field and ushered in the era of digital music.

In the 1960s, a team of Stanford musicians, engineers, computer scientists, and psychologists used computing in an entirely novel way: to produce and manipulate sound and create the sonic basis of new musical compositions. This group of interdisciplinary researchers at the nascent Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA, pronounced “karma”) helped to develop computer music as an academic field, invent the technologies that underlie it, and usher in the age of digital music. In The Sound of Innovation, Andrew Nelson chronicles the history of CCRMA, tracing its origins in Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory through its present-day influence on Silicon Valley and digital music groups worldwide.

The Sound of Innovation: Stanford and the Computer Music Revolution : Nelson, Andrew J. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

[twistedsoulmusic]

Continuing with their ongoing split series of vinyl releases, Portraits GRM presents two extended pieces from Jessica Ekomane and Laurel Halo. Jessica Ekomane gives us the excellent Manifolds, which is entirely computer-generated and is said to explore “the multiple possibilities of polyphonic writing.” Laurel Halo gives us a gorgeous, gauzy ambient piece, Octavia.