[PD] elitism, software and academia (was GEM FTGL Sadness)

[David Powers]

On 6/7/07, john saylor <js0000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> hi
>
> On 6/7/07, David Powers <cyborgk at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I really think it's just absurd to force all musicians into a model
> > that may only make sense from the software engineering / DSP side of
> > things. I usually am arguing more on the pro-technology side of
> > things, but in this case I think I must remind people : you don't need
> > a computer to make music.
>
> of course that is true. all you really need is your voice [or 'love'
> if you're a beatle wannabe] ...
>
> but if you want to do electronic music, with any degree of
> sophistication, you need to learn the tools. i guess i get a bit
> irritated when people think that computer music should be immediately
> accessible to them- then get upset when they find out they need to
> understand something about how computers work with audio in order to
> get what they want out of them. they think they can just press a
> button and ...
>
> if you just sit down at a piano and don't know anything about it, you
> might get some nice stuff out- but it's more a matter of serendipity
> than anything. you practice to get better.
>
> computers use math to do audio [dsp, convolution, ...]. so you need to
> study math [not really that much for most applications, but it does
> help]. and learning a programming language in some way will help too.
> musicians have been doing math for a long time [at least since
> pythagorean tunings, if not before]. and i don't even know about
> chinese or indian or arab or X traditions. [using algebra in a
> sentence there]
>
> also the jump from composition to programming is really not that
> great. it's all about flow control ...
>
> --
> \js  [ http://or8.net/~johns/ ]
>

I can agree with most of the above... But the only other note I'd make
is, there are a lot of uses for computers in music, that don't require
DSP. Sometimes I feel the DSP people forget about the area of
"computer aided composition" - which in many cases involves algorithms
but no DSP at all (and often requires the much maligned MIDI standard,
because that's the simplest way to get the output into a professional
notation program like Finale, for rendering into a score that actual
musicians can play). Computer aided composition is simply different
than DSP, and while set theory and related maths might be helpful,
computer aided composition does not use the same kinds of math that
DSP typically requires.

Programming, on the other hand, is quite helpful for computer aided
composition - and I'm probably not the only one around that can
program without knowing any difficult DSP stuff. But only algorithmic
type thinking is really needed for computer aided composition, not
programming per se.

Also don't forget, there are some good reasons for a division of
labor, abstraction, encapsulation, and black boxes. Sometimes it's
nice to have a little black box that works, without worrying about the
guts. Without that, we'd be reinventing the wheel every day, over and
over!

~David