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Music-Research Digest       Thu,  1 Mar 90       Volume 5 : Issue  21 

Today's Topics:
                Electronic and Computer Music Eduation
       Laske (was: Re: Music Research Digest      Vol. 5, #18)
                      More Knowledge Acquisition
                     PNM address and information


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Date: Sun, 25 Feb 90 10:49 EST
From: FNELSON@EDU.OBERLIN.OCVAXA
Subject: Electronic and Computer Music Eduation
To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg

 
 
I am involved in the definition of curricular goals for Oberlin's
Bachelor of Music degree in electronic and computer music. I am
wondering whether others in the music-research group are interested
in starting a discussion about education of future professionals in
the field.
 
Oberlin has been teaching electronic and computer music since the
late 60's with individual degree programs of all sorts.  Oberlin
graduates head companies like MacroMind and Twelve-Tone Systems.
Others have worked on music projects at LucasFilm, Apple, Yamaha,
and Sony.  Many others have followed the academic route and
currently run studios at colleges and universities.
 
We now have a four-year curriculum in place and we are graduating
our first seniors in May.  We are not exactly new at this but the
field is changing so quickly that we thought it would be a good time
to have another look at what we are doing.
 
The Context
 
In our present program we try to balance the acquisition of
technique with the creation of original music.  We are, in fact, a
composition department where all practical applications use
technological media.  We teach programming, recording technology,
and even a course in analog and digital circuit design for music.
We are not an engineering program and Oberlin has no engineering
department.  Our Computer Science Department is growing in both size
and quality and many of our students take advantage of this
resource.
 
To get the discussion going, here are some questions we are asking:
 
How much of the traditional music curriculum (theory, history,
keyboard proficiency) should be maintained in an electronic and
computer music degree?
 
What are the career prospects for our graduates and what subject
areas and skills are essential for professional preparation?
 
How important are programming proficiency, recording technique, and
engineering skills for the undergraduate?
 
If you had the opportunity to interview high school students
applying for a program like ours, what qualifications would you look
for?  What level of musical and technical preparation would you
expect?  What questions would you ask?
 
If you had the opportunity to hire a new faculty member, what would
you consider the essential (perhaps minimum) level of experience in
computer programming and other technical skills?
 
Thanks for your consideration.
 
Gary Lee Nelson
TIMARA Program
Conservatory of Music
Oberlin, OH 44074

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Date: 24 Feb 90 22:04:14 GMT
From: Eliot Handelman <eliot%phoenix@edu.princeton>
Subject: Laske (was: Re: Music Research Digest      Vol. 5, #18)
To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg

;Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 08:12:18 EST
;From: Otto Laske <laske@edu.bu.cs>
;Subject: Subject: KA      
;To: music-research <music-research%uk.ac.oxford.prg@uk.ac.nsfnet-relay>

;Feb 20, 90
;
;        The discussion on knowledge acquisition in composition has shown
;itself to be an emotional topic (as evidenced by Stephen Pope's latest
;remarks, among others). This is understandable, but should not hide the
;fact that a community of inquiry is coming into being here which needs
;some solidarity. 


Wrong, wrong, wrong. Otto, what is being said here is that your views
of knowledge engineering, your concept of how to do music and your
concept of how to do anything else are far less interesting than you 
make them out to be. You can cite articles by yourself dating back three
hundred years, and it wouldn't make any difference. You can write
articles about your other articles, as you did in Perspectives of New
Music V. 27 N. 2, in which you refer to yourself as "Laske," so that
readers who have forgotten who wrote this article in the first place
can think to themselves, "gee, the writer of this article has a high
opinion of Otto Laske." You can claim, as you do in a previous Music
Research digest, that the AI and Music workshop emphasizes knowledge 
engineering, but that's because you are the chairman of these damnably
dull conferences and you decide which papers will be read, and you
make sure that the overall picture supports your contentions about the
existence of interest in your ideas. You can point to the dissertation
of a lone computer science grad student whom you advised. You can point
to Ron Roozendaal, who happened to send me the paper he wrote for the
class he took with you when you taught in Utrecht. But the weight of 
opinion is that knowledge engineering is not a good approach to the
study of music.


;	My general feeling is that it would be beneficial to let the
;pressure off "KA in composition" and broaden one's views by getting
;to know other fields of design, such as architecture, and try to cut
;out this romantic notion of the composer that is so European. My goal
;has always been to de-mystify composition, or art generally, because
;I thought that only by making it transparent scientifically as much
;as one can, one can point to what cannot be grasped scientifically.
;This is different from proclaiming composition to be untouchable by
;scientific understanding.
;	Otto Laske


It's most unclear to me what Laske means in asserting that "art" should be
"de-mystified." It's equally unclear what Laske means by "scientific 
understanding." And it's completely unclear who Laske thinks he's
adressing in recommending that "this romantic notion of the composer that
is so European" ought to be cut out, or why these people should study
architecture. 

I would argue this out here if I thought it worthwhile. Let me merely
indicate that I take this all to be vacuous gibberish, the results of
associations forged in the early 60's during the heyday of serial music,
when one or two reputable european composers did think that the dilettante
perusal of architecture manuals would pay off compositionally, that
composition should be rationalized, and that scientific understanding
should be brought to bear on matters musical and compositional. The period
is historically interesting, but the importation of its dogma has be regarded
as suspect. There can be no "definition" of the scope, ambitions and limitations
of "art" that need have much validity over and beyond whichever products
grew up under the sign of that definition. As a man who claims for himself the
title of musicologist, Laske shows himself to be impervious to the historical
context of the lean and vitamin-starved ideas he advocates. 

------------------------------

Date: 26 February 1990 8:21:48 am
From: Stephen Travis Pope <stp@com.parcplace>
Subject: More Knowledge Acquisition
To: Music-Research@uk.ac.oxford.prg

Hello,

I'd like to make a few comments and respond to several points that my recent
posting brought up.
With respect to Stephen Smoliar's questions in MRD V5#18.

He asks, "To what extent has your design of tools been guided by prior
decisions of the nature of the actions you *wish* to take?"

A large part of the design of the my tools (the HyperScore ToolKit), is based
on the wonderful quote of yours "what a composer does is to do crazy stuff,"
i.e., the attempt was made to have no "coloring" in the environment. There are
no fixed notions of sections/tracks/voices/measures/events/parameters, but
rather the system can be easily transformed to meet the needs of the composer
in his/her current situation. The system's input language and user interface
are also designed to be rebuilt on-the-fly (as frequently as necessary). The
compositional methodology that the system is made to support is rapid
prototyping and incremental refinement of musical structures, which is itself
rather generic and can look quite different in different hands.

The issue of backing it all up with musical examples is quite important.
Whenever I give live presentations I try to play at least a few extended
examples to demonstrate the points under discussion. It's unfortunate that we
cannot do this in MRD (as yet).

Regarding Robert Row's comments in V5#19

Otto Laske's challenge was to come up with "..an alternative KA, leading to a
model of theory-in-use of composers." 
The hypermedia scores I mentioned do not by any stretch of the imagination
represent a model. They are data structures.
Robert Rowe mentions knowledge stored in people's "programs." I believe it is
important to differentiate between programs and scores (i.e., behavior and
state). In my case, I believe that the HyperScore ToolKit is relatively
"transparent," and has no compositional theory or direction in and of itself.
The knowledge (if any), of my recent work is encapsulated in the scores
(hypermedia documents) of these pieces, which are not "programs" in the
stricter sense of the word.

stp

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 24 Feb 90 14:46:20 -0800
From: John Rahn <pnm@edu.washington.u.milton>
Subject: PNM address and information
To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg

in re: James Symon's query
to: symon@cs.unc.edu   and  Oxford network

The email address for Perspectives of New Music is
	
	pnm@milton.u.washington.edu

(As remarked earlier, English email scrambles the order.)

The paper mail address is:

	Perspectives of New Music
	School of Music DN-10
	University of Washington
	Seattle, WA 98195
	USA

	phone: (206) 543-0196

An individual subscription for one year is US$30. This includes two issues
plus a Compact Disc. For overseas postage, add US$2. Checks should be made
out to Perspectives of New Music at the above address.

The student rate is $20, and the institutional rate is $60.

	John Rahn, Editor
	Jerome Kohl, Managing Editor
  	pnm@milton.u.washington.edu

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End of Music-Research Digest