Curtis Roads & Granular Synthesis

Interesting video:

http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=22657810001

And embedded for the lazys:

This guy teaches at my Alma Mater - UC Santa Barbara.

granny synth

wow, roads opened FOR autechre? i only heard him once in concert but that was a very impressive experience. i rate his pointlinecloud album and his books highly also. dude's got a firm grip on the aesthetic side as well as on the more precise and conceptual side. pretty cool video!

from the album..

Try reading his book 'Microsound'. I had to studied it for uni, fried my brains, understand it now though.

yeah, i knew he had written the Microsound book, so I listened to his Point Line Cloud album bout a year ago, and wasn't really blown away. much respect for his pontification and advancement on granular synthesis in general, but people have made more engaging music with it.

music that sounds like miscellaneous wet clicks and farts :|

idm

asymmetrical heads album cover

cool video

voila!

This is a great book by Curtis Roads:

http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Music-Tutor...0226&sr=1-1

If you're interested in synthesis and want to have a wide array of topics at your fingertips, this is definitely a high recommendation.

He's a legend. Everyone who makes music (electronic or otherwise) should probably have a copy of his Computer Music Tutorial at their disposal. Even though a lot of the material in the book was written decades ago, almost all of it is still relevant and useful in practical applications. He's a very nice man too. I've emailed him a couple times with beginner'ish technical questions, and he gave me thoughtful replies both times. I don't even go to his school.

His work is a bit stuffy and academic, and I rarely listen to it, but we can't deny the impact he had on electronic music's development. I think the development of granular synthesis is almost as important and interesting as FM synthesis or the like. It changed the way I think about sound.

I'll Nth the Microsound recommendation. It's not just a technical book like the CMT. It spends nearly as much time on the aesthetics of microsound, detailing the relationship between sound elements among a variety of time scales. And it's loaded with interesting history. Max Matthews, Xenakis, Paul Lansky, etc.

Can you guys elaborate on how the CMT is so useful. The Amazon description isn't that good and I'm lazy.

  scones to die for said:

Can you guys elaborate on how the CMT is so useful. The Amazon description isn't that good and I'm lazy.

It covers an extremely wide variety of topics. Analog to digital conversion, additive synthesis, FM synthesis, digital filter theory, FFT, algorithmic composition, MIDI, physical modeling, musical control interfaces, you name it ...

It doesn't go into great depth about any of those topics, but it gives you enough material to get a pretty good start on your project. Plus it has a really extensive bibliography.

For me curtis roads theories and music are (obviously) based on the idea music is can be academic like art, or dance or whatever. It depends on how open your are to this, and whether or not you will completely discredit it or not as i am sure most of WATMM might.

I just checked the Amazon description and it looks pretty spot on. What else do you want to know about it?

  hahathhat said:

music that sounds like miscellaneous wet clicks and farts :|

welcome to the world of academic 20th century electronic music!

  hahathhat said:

music that sounds like miscellaneous wet clicks and farts :|

As im sure you do alot, with your home made electronic noise making devices, making random noises is the essence of electronic music , if some one has never done this they have never made electronic music.

it doesn't end at the randomness stage though.

granular synthesis

i wonder why he takes so long to make tracks

  David R James said:

  hahathhat said:

music that sounds like miscellaneous wet clicks and farts :|

 

As im sure you do alot, with your home made electronic noise making devices, making random noises is the essence of electronic music , if some one has never done this they have never made electronic music.

this is true, but i do think it's cute & endearing that most of these highly trained academic electronic music composers end up making music that simply does sound like wet clicks, farts, bleeps and bloops of a very similar nature.

I love morton subotnick *runs*

  ms-dos said:

I just checked the Amazon description and it looks pretty spot on. What else do you want to know about it?

Your description was better.

  David R James said:

  hahathhat said:

music that sounds like miscellaneous wet clicks and farts :|

 

As im sure you do alot, with your home made electronic noise making devices, making random noises is the essence of electronic music , if some one has never done this they have never made electronic music.

though i may produce a shitload of wet farty noises in my studio, that's not what my finished tracks sound like. and i don't have to work on them for years, either. he said the first tape he put on was a demo of the technology... well, all of it sounds like a tech demo to me.

i'm not trying to say he's useless, just that he should stick to writing books and programming. i thought the gardening book recommendation was cool.

I own Microsound and The Computer Music Tutorial and they're excellent.

I love Point Line Cloud, I find it very relaxing.

interesting so many people in here have heard this guy's CD, when i dropped Subotnick in the AE forum a good chunk of the people haven't even heard of him. So i ask what is the deal with Curtis Roads and how does he have more recognition on watmm than say morton subotnick, oliveros, tudor?

i honestly hadn't heard of him until this thread and i consider myself somewhat knowledgeable on early electronic music