Ableton Live

La Psicologia della Gestalt nasce e si sviluppa in Europa nel '900 e cerca di spiegare e strutturare i fenomeni psicologici della percezione, trattandoli come insiemi di "regole" organizzate e strutturate, piuttosto che come somma delle singole parti costitutive. Si dissocia in questo dallo strutturalismo (con la sua tendenza ad analizzare i processi mentali e percettivi come somma di sensazioni elementari) ed accentua concetti come proprietà emergenti, olismo e contesto. Le teorie della Gestalt, sono state lungamente studiate in ambito grafico e compositivo, queste pagine web tenteranno di dimostrare un approccio "audio". Il lavoro è stato realizzato da Francesco Fumelli, docente di "Elementi di Informatica e Basic Design" all'ISIA di Firenze e da Andrea Fumelli diplomato in chitarra al Conservatorio Mascagni di Livorno. Nei 5 lavori presentati, si è tentato di riprodurre acusticamente soltanto 5 delle leggi percettive della Gestalt. Si tratta di un lavoro "in itinere", di uno studio preliminare più che di un lavoro terminato. Una trattazione esausitiva richiederà una analisi più completa ed approfondita. E' infatti indubbio che la componente sonora sia elemento fondamentale nella percezione del mondo fenomenico. Introduzione Realtà fisica e realtà fenomenica, definizione. La realtà fisica o transfenomenica è quella accessibile al dominio degli strumenti di misurazione tipici di discipline quali la fisica, la chimica, la biologia, l'astrofisica… La realtà fenomenica è la realtà percepita attraverso gli organi di senso e la mente; è la realtà risultante da processi di autoorganizzazione tipici degli apparati sensoriali.

The singer songwriter’s technological medium has always played a key part in the creation and execution of songs. While the impact of the piano and guitar on songwriting in the 20th and 21st centuries has been far reaching, it is becoming clear that the future of the practice will be bound up with the emerging digital technologies. Computer based MIDI and audio production systems (Digital Audio Workstations, or DAWs) in particular have become central to the set-up of the autonomous musician. In one sense the DAW functions as a tool for recording and producing traditionally conceived songs. However it is also an instrument in its own right whose characteristics may equally play a role in determining the manner of a song’s creation and its realization as a sonic entity. This chapter considers the potential of the DAW as a songwriting medium, focusing on its capacity to inform the creative process as well as the opportunities it provides to experiment with songwriting possibilities.

This talk juxtaposes two scenes of contemporary music-making with technology: a performance of Luigi Nono’s 1984 Prometeo for live electronics at the 2016 Lucerne Festival and a digital audio workstation (Ableton Live) workshop in Chicago from 2018. These belong to seemingly distant milieus: the world of professional art music and amateur electronic music production. Although addressing them requires different methodologies, I discuss how both scenes of musicking with technology touch on what it means to be a human subject in the twenty-first century. In the case of Prometeo, this involves confronting aspects of the inhuman within post-industrial late modernity; with the Ableton workshop this involves confronting the tangle of genres and of racial, gender, and sexual identities that operate in the spheres of popular music and digital participatory culture today. I describe the relationships between participants within each scene, and I consider questions of access and belonging as it pertains to technologically-aided musicicking and contemporary music education.

El diseño y construcción de instrumentos musicales se ha desarrollado de múltiples formas a través del tiempo, muchos de estos instrumentos han evolucionado hasta llegar a consolidarse de tal modo que se satisfagan las necesidades del compositor e intérprete. En el caso particular de los instrumentos informáticos, es decir aquellos que usan tecnologías electrónicas y digitales, la evolución se ha desarrollado a una gran velocidad si se compara con el recorrido evolutivo de un instrumento clásico de los empleados actualmente. Este documento aborda principalmente el contexto de los instrumentos musicales informáticos desde un análisis que comprende referentes históricos, desarrollos de las últimas décadas, tecnologías usadas en el campo, además de el análisis del compositor, intérprete e instrumento desde el contexto informático. Dicho análisis aborda con detalle el sistema Ableton-Launchpad desde la realización de un estudio de caso que permitió cuestionar, tomando como base una serie de entrevistas realizadas en el proceso, diferentes elementos en cuanto a su diseño, la relación de los elementos que lo conforman y el entendimiento de este como instrumento o no; además de analizar su pertinencia desde la mirada de distintos autores y campos artísticos musicales o sonoros.

In this paper I address some images, categories and open-ended trajectories of the laptop in music production. The aim is to explore the laptop’s increasing presence in the sites of music, from cyberspace to live venues, as well as the relationship between music and mobile computerized space. Implicit in the paper is the claim that the laptop is a neglected device, but that close attention to its position in cultural networks and everyday settings is one way of examining some possible ways into the complex entanglements and layerings of mobile space. The first part of the paper explores the laptop as the archetypal nomadic machine of the digital age, inserted into mobile networks, hubs and flows. The laptop mediates mobility and by doing so not only serves macro-processes of social and economic change, but also opens up creative possibilities for the musician beyond the studio and the home. The second part of the article examines the role of software in activating the laptop’s capabilities. The growth of music software and Virtual Studio Technology in the early 2000s, it will be argued, represents a major transformation in music production. A case study is made of a single application, Ableton Live, to show that new forms of music software encourage norms of creativity and play that take it beyond emulations of hardware studios. A residual distrust of the laptop’s automative capabilities, however, reprises an anxiety in the history of popular music around questions of creativity and musicianship. The final part explores this anxiety and argues that the laptop is a place-holder for conflicting meanings about what belongs in music: productivity and creation, reality and virtuality, play and work, the cybernetic and the organic. It thereby reveals socio-technical imbroglios in action, where digitized music and software code meet the material properties of technologies and the practices of users in complex, networked societies.

Keywords: laptops, music, digital, mobility, software, technology

Masteroppgaven er gjennomført som ledd i utdanningen ved Universitetet i Agder og er godkjent som del av denne utdanningen. Denne godkjenningen innebaerer ikke at universitetet innestår for de metoder som er anvendt og de konklusjoner som er trukket.

The final article in a four-part series, the article reflects upon two original recordings that employ stripped-down electronic dance music motifs and a freeze reverb effect to portray ambivalent euphoric feelings and an attempt to capture and prolong the echo of decaying euphoric moments.

‘Record production as a practice is little more than a century old and responds to societal and technological shifts’ (Burgess, 2013). The term 'record producer' or, more commonly, 'producer', is an umbrella idiom that can describe a range of different creative practices involved in the making and recording of music. Burgess goes on to divide these practices into six categories: artist, auteur, facilitator, collaborator, enabler and consultant. Broadly speaking, these different articulations define the roles of the producer from overseer to maker.

Through the application of Ableton software in combination with live analogue instrument playing, the performance will contribute to a current of contemporary practice that includes work by fellow improvisational producers such as Tim Exhile, Imogen Heap, Brian Eno, Bugge Wesseltoft and Henrik Schwarz.

This presentation explores a potential addition to Burgess's taxonomy; that of the producer as improviser.

La tesi " In Genesi col Dubbio" espone ideologicamente il tema del tempo e di come l'uomo si relaziona ad esso attraverso uno degli elementi che lo caratterizzano lungo il corso della sua vita, il Dubbio. L'opera musicale omonima fornisce un'interpretazione artistica fornendosi della geometria frattale come tramite tra pensiero razionale ed arte musicale concettuale, spiegando il percorso compositivo, tra idea e tecnologia applicata.

In this paper I aim to demonstrate a set of considerations and influences on a type of score designed for and specific to the 8x8 grid controller commonly associated with software such as Ableton Live.
The grid controller offers a unique method of control that is unlike other MIDI controller systems, and the problem of scoring for it comes primarily from the flexibility of functionality that the controller offers: from mapping to a grid layout of ‘clips’ within Ableton Live, to conventional MIDI-note systems. The deficiency with this latter mode is the requirement to learn a functionally non-linear map of pitch that is somewhat unintuitive in relation to the traditional staff- based hierarchy.
Through the performance and discussion of the score itself, this paper will show some of the idiosyncratic characteristics of an 8x8 grid controller, possible scoring paradigms, limitations shown thus far and potential limitations moving forward, and further considerations for new methods of working with this grid system.

This presentation focuses on a multimedia ensemble that created live music and sounds (acoustic and digital) to live video games. The session explores the successes, failures, and musical problems experienced within the ensemble as well as the specific software and hardware used by the ensemble. The session concludes with a discussion on future ensemble possibilities for music and sound with multimedia experiences.