Papers by Gary S. Kendall
International Computer Music Conference, 1992
Organised Sound, Aug 1, 2006
Edgard Vare`se’s Poe`me e ́lectronique can be viewed as a bridge between early twentieth-century ... more Edgard Vare`se’s Poe`me e ́lectronique can be viewed as a bridge between early twentieth-century modernism and electroacoustic music. This connection to early modernism is most clearly seen in its use of musical juxtaposition, a favoured technique of early modernist composers, especially those active in Paris. Juxtaposition and non-motion are considered here, particularly in relationship to Smalley’s exposition of spectromorphology (Smalley 1986), which in its preoccupation with motion omits any significant consideration of non-motion. Juxtaposition and non-motion have an important history within twentieth-century music, and as an early classic of electroacoustic music, Poe`me e ́lectronique is a particularly striking example of a composition that is rich in juxtapositions similar to those found in passages of early modernist music. Examining Poe`me e ́lectronique through the lens of juxtaposition and non-motion reveals how the organisation of its juxtaposed sounds encourages the experience of sound structure suspended time.
Qosqo for 8-channel sound
Wayda, 8-channel sound installation
Report on the 1981 International Computer Music Conference
Spatial reverberator
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Aug 1, 1988
The requirements of a spatial interchange format for electroacoustic music are examined with a fo... more The requirements of a spatial interchange format for electroacoustic music are examined with a focus on the interrelationship between the authoring of spatial content and its interpretation in audio reproduction. In context of electroacoustic music, the role of a spatial audio interchange format is to be a bridge between the processes of authoring and interpreting spatial content (Fig. ). It must enable the author to represent spatial content in a way that anticipates the means of reproduction in practical way. It must also represent the author's spatial content in a way that enables the interpreter to adapt it to a wide variety of reproduction settings. In scene-based multimedia, this interpretation is intended to be automated and to respond to user actions, but in electroacoustic music, the complexity of the interpretation is so great that one can hardly imagine how this could be accomplished except as an act of artistic judgment as happens in live diffusion. Because authoring and interpretation are so closely linked, the interchange format itself should include a description of the interpretation schemes that adapt content to the means of reproduction, even supporting alternative strategies. This is important to the author as well as the interpreter because they essentially participate in a process of artistic co-creation.
Compositional control of computer music by fuzzy logic
In computer music, it is often the case that the compositional act and the parametric control of ... more In computer music, it is often the case that the compositional act and the parametric control of the underlying synthesis algorithms can not be separated from each other. In these situations, composition is completely intertwined with and dependent on the control of the synthesis parameters. As a consequence, the compositional process can be strongly shaped by the nature of the synthesis technique that is being used. Computer composition then requires the composer to have a deep understanding of the synthesis algorithms and their theoretical basis. As numerous and diverse synthesis techniques have emerged in recent decades, specific compositional approaches have had to adapt to the control of each one. Instead of relying on such ad-hoc procedures of compositional control, computer music composers would benefit from a more general approach, one that could be applied in a variety of situations and contexts. The compositional control of computer music by fuzzy logic is proposed as a way of achieving this goal. It provides a simple, intuitive and flexible control of the compositional process that can be utilized in many different situations. Compositional control is achieved by the fuzzyfication of the relevant internal synthesis parameters and the parallel computation of several simple fuzzy IF-THEN rules of inference specified by the composer. This approach has been implemented computationally as a package called FLCTK (Fuzzy Logic Control Tool Kit) in the form of external objects for the widely used real-time compositional environments Max/MSP and Pd. As a demonstration of the wide range of situations in which this approach could be used, five different applications of this parametric fuzzy control are presented in the contexts of spectral synthesis, physical modeling, granular synthesis, particle-based synthesis and audiovisual composition.
International Computer Music Conference, Nov 1, 2006
In computer music, it is often the case that the compositional act and the parametric control of ... more In computer music, it is often the case that the compositional act and the parametric control of the underlying synthesis algorithms are not separable from each other. In these situations, composition is completely intertwined with and dependent on the control of the synthesis parameters. The compositional control of computer music by fuzzy logic is proposed here. This approach provides a simple, intuitive and flexible control of the compositional process that can be utilized in many different situations. Compositional control is achieved by the fuzzification of the relevant internal synthesis parameters and the parallel computation of several simple fuzzy IF-THEN rules of inference specified by the composer. The proposed approach has been implemented computationally as a package called FLCTK (Fuzzy Logic Control Tool Kit) in the form of external objects for the widely used real-time compositional environments Max/MSP and Pd. As a demonstration of the wide range of situations in which this approach could be used, an example of parametric fuzzy control of granular synthesis is provided.
Heliograms
Computer Music Journal, 1983
PinnaWorks: a NeXT Application for Three-Dimensional Sound Processing in Real-Time
The effect of atmospheric air turbulence on acoustic signals is modeled with the goal of producin... more The effect of atmospheric air turbulence on acoustic signals is modeled with the goal of producing a novel DSP technique for music and sound production. The building block of the turbulence model is called a 'turbule', a localized eddy with spherical symmetry. At the current stage of development, an operational model of a turbule is implemented in Matlab, and the effect of the turbule has been evaluated for a variety of atmospheric conditions. Analysis of the results from this model will pave the way for the creation of a digital effects module built on a network of turbules, one that can exaggerate the effect of air turbulence when needed for expressive purposes.
3-D Sound Demonstration: 'Sex/Windows
Theory and application of digital filtering in computer-generated music
Of all the contributions the computer has made to music over the past few decades, the most impor... more Of all the contributions the computer has made to music over the past few decades, the most important one has been to sound synthesis. Since the first experiments in computer-generated sound were carried out by Max Mathews in 1958, there has been a tremendous expansion of techniques for creating musical sounds and a refinement of technique indicative of a maturing art. Although not at the heart of traditional timbre-generating techniques, such as additive synthesis or frequency modulation, digital filtering is an important tool in timbre creation. This dissertation focuses both on filtering in timbre creation, especially in creating sounds with dynamic characteristics, and on filtering as a compositional technique in its own terms. The primary objectives of the dissertation are to discuss the technical basis of digital filtering from the standpoint of music synthesis and to provide criteria for the compositional use of filters. Viewed from its traditional engineering background, digital filtering is just one part of the general field of signal processing which includes other areas relevant to musicians, such as sampling theory with its concerns for foldover and quantization noise, convolution, and the z-transform. Within the theory of digital filters itself, the topics covered include pole-zero diagrams, the geometric interpretation of frequency response, adjusting gain, and time-variable filtering. Especially for those who will implement filters on mini-computers, special attention is paid to effects of finite word length, such as roundoff noise and overflow oscillations. The compositional approach to filtering presented here centers on a collection of first- and second-order filters and comb filters, which are described in detail and easily implemented in music-generating programs. These filters are used to illustrate a set of guidelines for combining simple filters to achieve complex amplitude responses. Furthermore, from a discussion of the nature of timbre and the aural perception of filtering, a set of criteria is developed for the compositional use of filters. Both the guidelines and the criteria are then combined in a discussion of creative uses of filtering, including a thorough discussion of the uses of the two-pole filter and the special effects that can be achieved by filtering.
Fruits and vegetables provide a sound world with which every human being has some familiarity. Th... more Fruits and vegetables provide a sound world with which every human being has some familiarity. That is why the sound of fruits and vegetables being struck, broken, torn, and smashed provides an ecologically valid basis for an auditory token library to be used in scientific visualization.
Spatial Sound Effects in a Software Effects Processor
Qosqo: Spirituality, Process and Structure
The Simulation of Three-Dimensional Localization Cues for Headphone Listening
Composers engaged in the sonic arts have frequently found themselves attempting to use spatial au... more Composers engaged in the sonic arts have frequently found themselves attempting to use spatial audio in ways that didn't work as intended. Maybe more than any other facet of technological music, mastering spatial audio seems to involve a learning process in which one slowly discovers the things that work and those that don't. The purpose of this paper is to foster understanding of spatial audio through examples of practical problems. These problems reveal some general misconceptions about spatial hearing that explain why things go wrong. A particular lesson to be gleaned from this discussion is that there is no silver bullet for solving spatial audio problems, and every situation needs to be understood in its proper context.
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Papers by Gary S. Kendall