ad-free
Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2014-05-16
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-T8kcSRLL0
nnsl nnsl onto us talked about one thing infants wanting only and this has to do with when people ask me you know what would you do and Twitter usually respond I do computer music %HESITATION now a number of people to stop talking the right then and there in the rest who's left have this news loves blink look in their eye and as if to say you
know what what does that mean that I feel like I'm actually depriving them of information by telling them this %HESITATION at which point I usually panic and spat out the first thing that comes to mind which is I have no idea what I'm doing which is true that's usually followed by a second thought which is whatever it is that I'm doing I love it India and
today I want to well %HESITATION share with you something I love and also why nothing will begin with just disa this question you know what is computer music and I'm gonna try to to my best provide a definition a me by telling you a story that goes through some of the stuff I've been working on and in the first thing I think in our story is
gonna be something called Chuck now %HESITATION Chuck is a programming language for music and to its open source is freely available in like to think that it crashes equally well at all modern operating systems into so tell me more about it on some give you a demo okay by the way I'm gonna nerd out for like a few minutes here so I I would say don't
freak out in fact I would invite all of you to join me in just peeking out if you've never written a line of code before in your life do not worry I bet you'll be able to come along on this %HESITATION for someone to do is to make a sine wave oscillator and we're gonna call the sine wave generator because anyone connect girl to death now
this is the kind of instruction for the sound output on my computer K. sub connected myself into the speaker next on the same my frequency is four hundred forty hurts and we'll let time advance by two seconds through this operation alright so if I were to play this you hear sign wave a former for her to two seconds okay creek numb and copy and paste this
image change soon as numbers to twenty point five four forty actual leverage that end point five and eight eighty by doubling frequency rushing going up the success of octaves and then have the sequence okay right now I can imagine treating all kinds of really horrible single sine wave pieces of music with this but I'm gonna do something that computers are really good at witches petition I'm
gonna put this all the while loop and yet you don't eat in debt but this purely for aesthetic reasons product it's good practice into we do this that's been gone for awhile to get infected from not gonna stop until this computer disintegrates and I can really empirically prove that to you I hope you'll believe me when I say that %HESITATION next replaces two twenty by math
gotten random to ethnic generate a random number between thirty and one thousand and to send out to the frequency me and to do this every half a second do this every two hundred milliseconds one hundred right at this point we reach something that I would like to think of as the canonical computer music this is not to me via the sound that mainframes are socially making
when they're thinking really hard like it's the sound you know it's like square root of five million and so you know this is this computer music yeah I I guess by definition it's music is part not the kind of music you woulda no listen to cruising down the highway but it's it's a fun it's a foundation of computer generated music and using chalk Washington building instruments
in the Stanford laptop orchestra based right here at Stanford center for computer research music in acoustics now a lot of work stress an ensemble of laptops humans special hemispherical speaker race now the reason we have these so that the instruments we create out of the laptop one the sound to come out of somewhere near the instrument and the performer how much like an acoustic traditional acoustic
instrument which part of playing violin here to selling actually not come out of the PA system from the artifact itself so the some speakers are meant to emulate that in fact I'm gonna show you how we are actually built them the first step is to go to ikea and by sellable this isn't eleven inch blanda mapped that's actually that's the actual name and actually use one
of these to make salad at home as well I kid you not and first step is you turned upside down and then you drill holes in them holds her hand me in in the base plate put car speaker drivers well in them belonged amplifiers needing closure you put that all together you have the semi circle speaker race Pat people at laptops you have a laptop orchestra
into you know one woman a lot of work to sound like Wilhelmina we give you a demonstration of one of about two hundred instruments have created so far for the locked up orchestra in one dues actually come to over this thing this is a person I have a funny is actually used to be will a commodity at gaming controller culvert came track right this thing has
has a glove input on Hansen's tethered to the base and this will track positions of your hands in real time version designed as a golfing controller Tom to detect the motion of your swing that turned out to be a rather large commercial non success at which point three slash prices to ten dollars at which point computer music researchers set this is awesome we can we can
protect instruments out of this so usually one instrument created of one of many in this instrument is a is called Twilight ends inventive go with this metaphor of up pulling a sound out of out of the ground soon receive this is work but back and then if you good left right so the good health and pain on this is a slightly metallic sound it hovering car
this third one is a yeah ratchet like interaction so internet up so it's slightly different ration fourth one is a drone only %HESITATION totally different interaction into just imagine that there's this giant invisible drone's stage and I'm going to bang it so they go so that's a that's one of many insurance in the laptop orchestra thank you phone in we put that together you get something
that sounds I give this and so far thing from the experience of building a lot of instruments for the laptop orchestra and infant curiosity of wondering what if we but these hopefully expressive instruments and we brought it to like a lot of people posted a healthy bout of insanity we put those two things together led to %HESITATION lets me actually co founding a start up company
in two thousand and eight occult Smeal now Samuels missions to treat expressive mobile music and that one first musical instruments created his call ocarina Andamans demo this for you real quick %HESITATION so ocarina peace was inching flute like instrument called the ocarina and done this one is a four hole English pendant configuration and you're lonely blowing into the microphone to %HESITATION to make the sound and
this actually little Chuck script running here but detecting the strength of your blowing and also synthesizing the sound my brother is not to T. accelerometers he can get more than a duty for your %HESITATION okay Bach this imperial here little compliment with melody accompaniment actually follows the melody and the other way around the this is the time to know but you take your time and figure
out where your expressive spaces anda you just hang out here for awhile really really dramatic effect if you want and whenever you're ready I %HESITATION annnnd I %HESITATION number notes I'm gonna use more vibrato towards and given the more expressive quality I %HESITATION I %HESITATION in this excerpt on thank you you're very kind home so I feel good question ask Audrina is that you know is
this a toy or is it an instrument he meets both but for me I think a more informed questions suppressive and at the same time I think treating these have instruments ask a question about the role of technology is a place for how we make music you know apparently for example not the longer the going hundred years ago found along the course of human history families
back then used to make music together as of common form of entertainment I don't think that's really happening and much anymore it's before radio before recording in the last hundred years with all this technology we now have more access to music his listeners to consumers somehow I think we're making less music that ever before not sure why that would be maybe it's because it's too easy
just to hit play and while listening music is wonderful there's a special joy to making music that's all its own and I think that's one part of the goal of why I do what I do is kind of take a step back to the past a little bit right now if that's one goal the other goal is to look future and think about what kind of
new musical things can we make that we don't perhaps yet have names for it's enabled by technology but ultimately I changed the way humans make music in terms can be one example here in this is ocarina UM's other feature the globe into I'm sure you actually sing to other users of ocarina blow into their iPhone play something this is Gee I are from Texas R. I.
K. owner loves the three letter names today albus Angelus open pretty late someone minimum many music here I %HESITATION gonna do with this is that well died is that technology should not be foregrounded here when you actually open this up the first thought is that here you either somebody somewhere out there please music and this is a small but I think important human connection to make
that props the technology affords home is a final example and perhaps a favorite example is that in the wake of the two thousand eleven or quicken soon tsunami disaster in Japan a woman reached out in one of our senior apps to try to get people to join in to sing with her on version of lean on me now in these apps there's this thing that allows
any user to add their voices to existing performance by any other user or group of users some some sense she's created this kind of global ad hoc chorale of strangers and within weeks thousands of people joined in on this and you can see people coming from all around the world and all these lines converging on the origin where the first rendition of the song was found
innocent okay %HESITATION Anderson was sounds like when there's a there's a thousand people this is a thousand voices leann he the pure music there's a computer music yeah I guess so this something that you really could done without but at the same time it's also human and I think what have essentially answer so far is maybe why I do this that I to and lets his
final return to the first question what Cuban music and I think that the the catch here is that at least me computer music is only about computers it is about people is that how can use technology change the way we think and do and make music and maybe even add to how we connect with each other through music and with that high once said this is
