[NewMusic] League of Automatic Music Composers Archive '78-'81 release

[Jon Leidecker]

On Oct 5, 2009, at 9:23 PM, Gino Robair wrote:

> Saved from the Shoebox of Doom by Jon Leidecker, it's now available on  
> a ltd
> edition flash drive: Info and photo here:
> http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/2009/10/league-of-automatic-music- 
> composers.
> html
>
> And here:
> http://personal.ilimit.es/perkele/evol/purchase.html

I missed this when you sent it out the first time Gino -- thanks for  
noising it (and for posting the ekdahl moisturizer, which is x10 fun to  
play -- anyone who stops by Baltimore, visit True Vine records and stop  
by the side room, where Karl is usually hanging out in his shop  
surrounded by absolutely bizarre noisemakers)

Anyway since this list is quiet enough and the keydrive retails for  
about $30, here are the very idealistic and pretentious liner notes I  
wrote for the key drive

-jl


--

	Near the beginning of the twentieth century, a few forward thinking  
composers began to look forward to the machines that would allow them  
direct and total control over every parameter of their music.  Musical  
imagination was already straining against the limits of what the  
technology of written notation could provide. New compositions were  
increasingly becoming too complex to be accurately played by even the  
most technically proficient orchestras. And while the framework of  
written notation seemed to inevitably lead towards atonality, others  
began to hear a music organized from a wider realm of sound, well  
outside the parameters of what notation could allow them to manipulate  
or inscribe.
	Those who wished to leave traditional harmonic writing behind entirely  
began to dream of machines which could instantly produce any  
combination of imaginable sounds directly upon receipt of the  
composer's score. As imagined by Varèse in "The Liberation of Sound" in  
1936: "Whatever I write, whatever my message, it will reach the  
listener unadulterated by 'interpretation'".  Taking this Utopian ideal  
to its logical conclusion, the composer Raymond Scott wrote in 1949:  
"In the music of the future, the composer will sit alone on the concert  
stage and merely THINK his idealized conception of his music. His brain  
waves will be picked up by mechanical equipment and channeled directly  
into the minds of his hearers, thus allowing no room for distortion of  
the original idea." Within a decade, Scott had invented the first  
electronic musical Sequencer, allowing him to dispense with human  
performances of his music altogether.
	Much of what these composers wished for have long since become  
commonplace modes of working for us. Anyone with access to a computer  
has the ability to realize and juxtapose seemingly unlimited  
arrangements of sounds, and to hear the result before leaving their  
desk. This process of working is so radically different in practice and  
result, that it scarcely seems a replacement. But, as in any case where  
a machine enables one person to do a facsimile of the work of many,  
economic realities will impose this new workflow as standard.
	Some artists have flourished in this environment; being forced to do  
everything yourself leads to an explosion of new approaches and  
solutions. But it is a different. more inward kind of music. The kind  
of variety that naturally results from teamwork is difficult to  
manually code -- you can put in the hours to simulate that complexity,  
but in the end, what is audible in the result is usually just the extra  
time the author has spent alone. This isolation is built into the  
design of our tools - computer software designed to enable one users'  
total control rarely accommodates multiple users well -- the tools  
built to empower the individual make realtime musical collaborations  
awkward, with everyone instead taking their turns at the workstation.  
The composer once frustrated by the limitations of musicians today  
finds himself alone, a programmer staring at a screen.
	As for the audience, Scott's depiction of Utopia is increasingly close  
to their reality: we are left, in our seats, with nothing to watch but  
that programmer's face, illuminated by a screen. In fact, some of the  
most powerfully emotional and communicative concerts I've seen in the  
last ten years meet this description: given the role of the machines in  
our lives, this relationship is increasingly a familiar and evocative  
situation. But for those who appreciate music as a social activity,  
enriched by the collaboration required to make a fuller sound, it is  
clear that our tools are having more of an influence on the result than  
many of those who use them. When you are taught to relate to something  
strictly as your servant, you are inevitably enslaved himself.
	When listening to the unedited, slowly unfolding cassettes of the  
League of Automatic Music Composers, we hear an alternative to our  
relating to machines explicitly as tools. The League's interest in  
unstable, unpredictable networked systems that react to inputs instead  
of complying to commands brought about a situation where the performer  
was forced to listen, to engage with the sound. Now that we have made  
these machines a part of our environment, we need an aesthetic that  
allows us to hear the intrinsic behaviors & properties of these  
machines for what they really are -- as increasingly natural objects in  
our environment. The League's music demonstrates opportunities for play  
and communication in the technologies that we are now prone to seeing  
strictly through a dystopian lens. Within the language of music, we can  
learn to hear and respond to the emerging idiomatic 'voice' of the  
computer without reflexive alienation.
	The fact that these recordings are already thirty years old seems  
incredibly reassuring. Roots like this illustrate how little we settle  
for when speaking of 'interactivity' in software.  These are more than  
artifacts, they provide a model for optimism in our current landscape.  
These ideas are only getting started.

Jon Leidecker, September 2009



p.s. hey guys by way of postscript here are five examples of precedents  
& contemporary work pursuing similar creative goals to the League.  
Louis Barron's electronic instrument design took inspiration from the  
concept of Cybernetics as defined by American mathematician Norbert  
Wiener, joining analog tone generators together with unstable wiring  
that would respond to a performer's input in ways that were seemingly  
alive, a fact underlined by the fact that these circuits would  
sometimes short out and destroy themselves to spectacular sonic effect.  
David Tudor's music structured from amplification and gain staging to  
create unpredictable patterns of feedback ('feedback' having once been  
described by Tudor as the intrinsic voice of the electronic music  
medium, unavailable before the creation of amplifier / speaker  
systems). Roland Kayn also modeled his extended improvisations on the  
concept of Cybernetics, patching together electronics to reveal  
relationships 'not accessible to processes of human reasoning', which  
he described as a rudimentary form of artificial intelligence. Engineer  
Kurt Graupner's cross-patched mixing consoles designed for the rock  
band Faust allowed each member to mute the output of any combination of  
the other member's mixers, and be muted in turn, allowing them to  
recreate the studio tape-edits of their records in a real-time concert  
setting. And Laurie Spiegel's early programming work allowed the  
computer to analyze her playing and respond with layers of  
transpositions, reversals, interpolations & fragmentations, which she  
could then respond to in turn. These examples provide a context of the  
most inspiring aspect of the League's work: not just as pioneers in the  
use of improvising with microcomputers, but as musicians who shifted  
their roles as performers away from a notion of one who 'masters' the  
instrument to one who truly interacts and engages with its emerging  
voice.

Bibliography Overkill

Collins, Nicolas, editor: Composers Inside Electronics, Music after  
David Tudor, Leonardo Music Journal Volume 14, 2004
Frith, Fred, personal anecdote regarding early 70's touring with Faust
Kayn, Roland, liner notes for 'Elektroakustische Projekte 1966-1975' 3  
LP box set, Colosseum Records, 1975
Perkis, Tim, 'The impact of Computer Technology on the Artistic  
Process', http://www.perkis.com/wpc/writings.html, 1993
Scott, Raymond, typewritten notes reproduced in liner notes for  
'Manhattan Research, Inc.', Basto Records, 2000
Spiegel, Laurie, 'Manipulations of Musical Patterns', IEEE Computer  
Society Catalog No. 393, pp. 19-22, 1981
Varèse, Edgard, "The Liberation of Sound", Perspectives on New Music,  
1936
Zvonar, Richard, 'Louis and Bebe Barron: Strange Cues from the ID', e/i  
Magazine, Issue 3, 2003