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[Apologies for cross-postings.] Computer Music Journal 28(4), which appeared in print recently, is also accessible on the Web. The table of contents and a description are given below. The printed issue includes a DVD, which contains audio and video compositions curated by Takayuki Rai as well as examples to accompany recent articles. The electronic version of the issue is available to both CMJ subscribers and non-subscribers by visiting http://mitpress.mit.edu/CMJ and clicking on the hyperlinks in the issue's table of contents. (All the reviews can be retrieved by clicking on the link for the first review.) Access is free of charge to CMJ subscribers. (For details, see "Electronic Access" on the Web site.) The DVD program notes and the article by Steven Jan may be freely downloaded by anyone. Our thanks to all who contributed to this issue! --Douglas Keislar, Editor ========================================= Computer Music Journal, Vol. 28, Issue 4 - Winter 2004 ---------------------------------------------------- About This Issue News ---------------------------------------------------- Interview An Interview with Edmund Campion Keeril Makan ---------------------------------------------------- Audio Analysis and Synthesis Bézier Spline Modeling of Pitch-Continuous Melodic Expression and Ornamentation Bret Battey Phase-Continuous Frequency Change in the Direct-Form, Second-Order Recursive Oscillator Peter R. Symons ---------------------------------------------------- Music Classification Algorithmic Clustering of Music Based on String Compression Rudi Cilibrasi, Paul Vitányi and Ronald de Wolf ---------------------------------------------------- Music Analysis Meme Hunting with the Humdrum Toolkit: Principles, Problems, and Prospects Steven Jan ---------------------------------------------------- Reviews Events Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia: Forty Years on the Edge Larry Austin Linux Audio Conference 2004 Dave Phillips The Second International Symposium on Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval (CMMR 2004) Marcus Pearce and David Meredith Publications Peter Manning: Electronic and Computer Music, Revised and Expanded Edition James Harley Recordings Eduardo Reck Miranda: Mother Tongue Perry Cook Various: Electroshock Presents Electroacoustic Music, Volume VII Patricia Dirks Various: Harangue II Patricia Dirks Various: Presence III; Various: DISContact! III James Harley ---------------------------------------------------- Products of Interest DVD Program Notes Instructions to Contributors ============================================================== About This Issue The composer Edmund Campion, who was associated for several years with the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris, now serves as codirector of the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at the University of California, Berkeley. Many of his electroacoustic works exhibit an interest in combining formal composition with guided improvisation. In an interview in this issue, Mr. Campion discusses, among other topics, how he uses real-time audio signal analysis to achieve interactivity between the computer and the performer. In works like Corail, for example, a Max/MSP patch "listens" to the performer's rhythm, pitch, articulation, and timbre, and responds by projecting related sounds into the surrounding space, influencing the performer's subsequent musical choices. Computer music having originated in the West, its tools not surprisingly tend to be oriented, sometimes unconsciously, toward models of Western music, and moreover toward those aspects most easily captured by traditional music notation and nomenclature. However, a great deal is to be learned by applying technological research to nonwestern art forms. Bret Battey's article in this issue introduces a technique for analyzing the highly expressive pitch curves in Indian classical music, along with corresponding trajectories of amplitude and spectral centroid. His method involves segmentation into phrases, identification of critical inflection points, and fitting of Bézier splines to the data between those points. The author details the mathematics behind his approach and also presents sound examples demonstrating his software's output. He advocates wider incorporation of Bézier splines in computer music applications, following the lead of computer graphics. In the next article, Pete Symons gives a mathematical overview of a common component in digital sound synthesis: the second-order direct-form recursive oscillator. This algorithm offers computational simplicity and low distortion. However, the author shows how the oscillator encounters problems and can produce audible clicks when constant-amplitude, phase-continuous changes of frequency are expected. To mitigate these problems, he has arrived at a procedure that computes new initial conditions (defined as functions of amplitude, frequency, and phase) at each frequency transition. A number of researchers have tackled the problem of automated classification of music. The article herein by Rudi Cilibrasi, Paul Vitányi, and Ronald de Wolf presents their technique, which takes MIDI files as input but has no built-in knowledge of music. The method is based on a general-purpose similarity metric called the normalized compression distance, which has been applied in fields as diverse as astronomy, genomics, and linguistics. The authors summarize experiments showing that their approach can distinguish between various musical genres and can even cluster pieces by composer. Our final article, by Steven Jan, proposes a memetics of music and a methodology for initial forays into this territory. Richard Dawkins, who coined the term "meme," described it as a unit of cultural transmission, and mentioned melodies as one example. By analogy with genes, memes are said to propagate themselves from brain to brain, with the most successful transformations surviving. Mr. Jan's article suggests that music theorist Eugene Narmour's implication-realization model, based on Gestalt principles, provides a good foundation for musical memetics. The author then relates how he put the Humdrum Toolkit (described in our Summer 2002 issue) into service to detect possible memes in the music of Haydn and Mozart. The proliferation of audio and music tools on the Linux platform was outlined in an article by Dave Phillips in the Winter 2003 issue of Computer Music Journal. In the present issue's Reviews section, Mr. Phillips relates recent developments in evidence at the Second International Linux Audio Conference, held again at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Also reviewed in this issue are two other events, a new edition of a textbook on electronic music, and numerous CDs. As in 2003, the annual Computer Music Journal disc accompanying the Winter issue is a DVD rather than a CD. We thank Takayuki Rai for serving as curator for the audio and multimedia compositions by Japanese composers on this year's disc. The annual disc also always includes sound examples to accompany recent articles. As an adjunct to Paul Doornbusch's examples for his article from Spring 2004, we are pleased to present a 1951 track of historical significance: possibly the earliest extant recording of a computer playing music. See the DVD program notes in this issue for more information. Front cover. An image-processed photo of Vikas Kashalkar singing while playing a drone on the tamboura. A brief excerpt from Mr. Kashalkar's performance is heard on the accompanying DVD in conjunction with the article by Bret Battey. The border of this image was constructed using Bézier curves, in an analogy with the sound-modeling technique described in Mr. Battey's article. Back cover. A high-end audio production environment described in this issue's Products of Interest section. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Douglas Keislar Editor, Computer Music Journal (MIT Press) http://mitpress.mit.edu/Computer-Music-Journal/ email: [log in to unmask] tel: +1 (510)486-0141 x1 Computer Music Journal, 2550 9th Street #207 B, Berkeley, CA 94710, USA ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~