This collection of essays on electroacoustic music explores the creative possibilities to be found in various forms of musical analysis. Taking pitch, duration, intensity, and timbre as the four basic elements of music, the authors discuss electroacoustic works. In this analysis, they examine the applications of neumes, contemporary staff notation, Csound orchestra and score files, time-domain representations, and spectrograms. They take into consideration both the positive (preservation of the abstract) and negative (creative limitation) aspects of these analytical methods. This text...

Composers have used formalized procedures to create music throughout history. With the advent of the computer, algorithmic composition allows composers not only to create and experiment with different formalisms, but to hear and evaluate results quickly. Often in algorithmic composition, the composer has only a vague idea how the output will sound, but because the input is highly automated, the composer can make adjustments to take advantage of happy accidents, program bugs, and other creative sources of sound.

Algorithmic Composition: A Guide to Composing Music with Nyquist...