Analog Synthesizers

This paper examines the aesthetic impetus for Milton Babbitt’s rhythmic systems of composition and his use of complex rhythmic strata. The author examines the history of two of Babbitt’s early works including synthesizer with live performer, Vision and Prayer and Philomel, addressing issues in the composer’s rhythmic notation, particularly in Philomel. The first section of Philomel is rhythmically analyzed and re-notated in an effort to challenge Babbitt’s use of 3/4 time signatures as an arbitrary delineator for his system of time-point serialization., providing a more accurate rhythmic demarcation for the phrases of the section according to event onsets. Rhythmic notational errors in Babbitt’s score are also addressed, with possible solutions given.

Nowadays, children grow up in a digital-cultural environment that forms their music experiences. However, the traditional music educational methods, as they were designed many decades ago, they do not involve new technologies or the use of electronic sounds and instruments in their content. To that point, a vital part of children's music preferences is not expressed. In recent years, as an attempt to integrate digital media into early musical lessons, some virtual instruments have been developed. However, most of them consist of a reproduction of acoustic instruments (pianos, glockenspiels, percussion) without taking advantage of new technologies widen abilities. This paper aims to present Synth4kids, an original music-making web-application created to be used by children from 5 to 8 years old. Synth4kids is a monophonic virtual instrument synthesizer based on analog synthesis, incorporating elements from the traditional music-educational methods, oriented to music lessons. It is also compatible with all tablets and computers and can be used alone or in conjunction with acoustic and Orff instruments. Furthermore, it benefits from the tablets' tilt sensor and touch screen, enabling extended kinaesthetic experiences. All in all, it offers opportunities for extended sound experimentation and improvisation, allowing children to get in touch with electronic music.

Introduzione alla figura di Paolo Ketoff e ad aspetti tencici, estetici e storici della produzione del Synket, il primo sintetizzatore portatile prodotto in Europa per l'American Academy in Rome nel 1965. Con l'epistolario di Paolo Ketoff comprendente, tra gli altri, carteggi con John Eaton, John Cage, Franco Donatoni.

This paper discusses the work of the Prisma project, which happened between 1984 and 1987 and whose main purpose was to introduce synthesizers and MIDI technologies to the tradition called música popular brasileira (‘Brazilian popular music’; the anacronym ‘MPB’ is widely used as well) as a significant purpose of their work, by making extensive use of state-of-the-art technology and introducing electronic sounds (including sound effects) and music sequencers in their studio and onstage performances. Unlike those involved in the making of funk carioca in Rio de Janeiro and technobrega in Northern Brazil some years later, most of the Prisma participants were established professionals who had been working with acoustic or electromechanical instruments for a decade or more when the project started. Since electronic musical instruments were rare in Brazil in the eighties and MPB comprised a long-standing controversy about musical Brazilianness (including the use of imported electric and electronic instruments) and a portion of Prisma’s music was influenced by the use of technology in the studio and onstage as much as borrowing from experimental electronic music and electronic dance music, it proposes a question: can the music recorded and performed during the project be called a hybrid or does it integrally belong MPB? Looking for an answer, it refers to ethnomusicological works and literature on hybridity in popular music to explore the antagonism between electronic music and tradition in Brazilian music in the seventies and eighties.

"[per abstract esteso in italiano, v. sotto]

My Ph.D. research focuses on the interactions between electroacoustic avant-garde music and the production of sound and music for films in Italy during the 1960s. I contribute to shed new light on the electronic activity of well-known composers such as Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota, as well as on the activity of less-known pioneers of Italian electronic experimentation, namely composers Gino Marinuzzi jr. and Vittorio Gelmetti, and sound engineer Paolo Ketoff; I underline the intense activity of American composers resident in Rome at that time such as John Eaton and Musica Elettronica Viva, through the survey of new documents regarding the foundation of the tape lab of the American Academy in Rome. I track the origin and the role of two of the first European synthesizers, Fonosynth and Synket, fundamental both for Italian cinematic sound production and electronic avant-garde.

La mia tesi di dottorato di ricerca analizza da una duplice prospettiva storica ed estetica le  interazioni tra la musica elettroacustica e il cinema in Italia negli anni ’60. È strutturata in quattro capitoli ai quali segue una sezione di appendici documentarie.
Il primo capitolo, dedicato alla ricostruzione storica dell’ambiente musicale e cinematografico di Roma negli anni ’60, ruota intorno alla difficoltà di individuare, relativamente all’esperienza elettroacustica, un confine netto tra aree d’azione rispettivamente dell’avanguardia e della committenza messa in atto dal cinema nei confronti del mondo musicale. Si arriva a ipotizzare una sostanziale comunanza di radici tra post-produzione cinematografica e sperimentazione per quel che riguarda l’introduzione e lo sviluppo delle tecnologie elettroacustiche, che nella fattispecie sono individuate in due sintetizzatori artigianali – il Fonosynth e il Synket – progettati e realizzati dal compositore Gino Marinuzzi jr. e dall’ingegnere Paolo Ketoff.
Il secondo capitolo, attraverso l’analisi delle funzioni che i sintetizzatori rivestono nelle pratiche di sonorizzazione cinematografica romana, porta in evidenza i tratti fondamentali del dibattito che investe questioni generali della riflessione musicale dell’avanguardia romana di quel periodo (dinamiche di organizzazione del suono, concetto di rumore, rapporto suono/sorgente, concetto di spazio sonoro) e li mette in collisione con il parallelo processo di ripensamento del suono filmico. Viene analizzata la significativa esperienza teorica e compositiva di Vittorio Gelmetti.
Il terzo capitolo pone la questione del travaso di stilemi elettroacustici dal medium musicale al medium cinematografico, individuando alla base una trasposizione da un “livello di cultura”  alto a uno medio (Eco 1964).*  Viene ridiscussa e superata la nozione di cliché che lega il suono elettroacustico cinematografico a situazioni topiche narrative di tipo fantascientifico e/o di devianza psico-sociale, per compiere un excursus storico sull’affermazione, nell’immaginario cinematografico, di “tropi sonori” legati all’introduzione del suono fonografico dall’inizio del Novecento agli anni ’60.
Il quarto capitolo individua le caratteristiche drammaturgiche e semantiche che il suono elettroacustico assume nel cinema italiano degli anni ’60, rilevando come esso funzioni generalmente come elemento di dinamismo, configurando momenti d’instabilità narrativa tra opposti poli situazionali. Esso si pone semanticamente in relazione feconda con una categoria filosofica particolarmente rappresentativa del sistema socio-culturale degli anni ’60, decodificata da Jean Baudrillard: l’automatismo.  La parte finale formula proposte di percorsi critici e analitici, isolando quattro esperienze autoriali che rappresentano altrettante vie di sviluppo di una triangolazione instauratasi tra ricerca scientifica (in particolare campo cibernetico), sperimentazione musicale e rappresentazione cinematografica.
L’apparato documentario racchiude, tra le altre cose, una lunga intervista al tecnico del suono Federico Savina, memoria storica della postproduzione cinematografica italiana e un catalogo ragionato delle musiche per film di Gino Marinuzzi jr.

* Umbero Eco, "Cultura di massa e 'livelli' di cultura", in Id., "Apocalittici e integrati. Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa", Milano: Bompiani, 1964."

A session co-organized with Michael Johnsen and Matt Rogalsky. A detailed examination of Tudor’s extant electronic instruments now archived at Wesleyan will be presented, along with discussions on research methodology, historical context, and the relationship between individual instruments and works.

In 1989, Forrest Warthman, an engineer/technical writer based in Palo Alto, attended a concert of Merce Cunningham Dance Company at UC Berkeley. Not knowing much about experimental music that was the Company’s trademark, Warthman was nonetheless struck by a musician who sat amidst a myriad of electronic devices, manipulating them in an intricate manner. This was David Tudor, a long-time musician for the Cunningham Company, who was once hailed as the foremost pianist of new music (most notably as the performer of John Cage’s works), but had left his instrument to become a composer of electronic music in the late 1960s. During the intermission Warthman approached Tudor and proposed to build a computer system that would integrate the proliferation of his electronic devices. Tudor was intrigued. Over the course of next three years, the initial plan of an integrating computer turned into something quite different: a synthesizer which operated on an analog neural-network chip (80170NX) recently developed by Mark Holler at Intel. Tudor subsequently used this ‘neural-network synthesizer’ to create his last major work “Neural Synthesis.” This paper presents a detailed study of Warthman’s instrument and Tudor’s composition, based on interviews with Warthman and others related to the project, analysis of Tudor’s notes stored at the Getty Research Institute, and examination of the actual synthesizer archived at Wesleyan University. It surveys the peculiarities of the neural-network synthesizer in relation to Tudor’s well-known dislike for commercial synthesizers and von Neumann computers. Through an analysis of Tudor’s distinct approach to the synthesizer, which incorporated a curious use of a thermal noise in the circuitry that Warthman had initially attempted to remove, the paper explores the nebulous line between the ‘instrument’ and the ‘composition,’ against the backdrop of an idiosyncratic goal that Tudor had set for his music since the early 1970s: “to discover an instrument as a natural object.”

O presente trabalho busca compreender a relação entre o compositor de música eletroacústica e o desenvolvimento dos instrumentos eletroacústicos, em especial a influência dos sintetizadores na música gerada. Adentramos especialmente na prática de patching, recurso que facilita o uso por omitir do músico conhecimentos avançados de eletrônica e programação em sintetizadores modulares de tensão controlada e softwares. A pesquisa tem como base os relatos de Robert Moog (apud KETTLEWELL, 2002), Donald Buchla e Miller Puckette (apud CHADABE, 1997), assim como os estudos de Peter Manning (2013) e Joel Chadabe (1997), e as obras de Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Morton Subotnick e Philip Manoury. Tem como principal objetivo refletir sobre o papel do compositor de hoje e os desdobramentos poéticos na prática de música eletroacústica.

The presentation, given during the development of my work on 'modal narratives' [see https://www.academia.edu/915329/Scenarios_and_counterfactuals_as_modal_narratives] explores the susceptibility of the history of the development of the Moog synthesizer to counterfactual treatment.