Course
Digital Composition and Performance
We know you're out there: talented, creative laptop performers; obsessively meticulous digital sound producers; visual artists incorporating sound in their exhibitions; glitch-happy hardware hackers; sound designers itching to go further with musical structure; interactive sound installation artists; performers wishing to branch out into the world of electronic and computer music (composition even); classically-trained composers wanting to break into the digital age...
Some of you will have thought that a university music department is not for you, that your lack of formal musical education would stand in your way. It ain't necessarily so. The MSc in Digital Composition and Performance is a dynamic new MSc designed to attract composers, musicians, and sound artists from all aesthetic and musical dispositions. The common ground is an interest in developing creative and technical expertise in composition and performance with computers.
No formal training in music or computer music is required, just a solid background in creative music making and a good bachelors degree in a sound-related discipline (there is also an opportunity to admit students on the basis of a portfolio of work alone). It can be studied 12 months full time (9 months for the Diploma), or part time over two years.
You will be working in an exceptionally energetic environment of Masters students in the fields of Design and Digital Media, Sound Design, Composition, Advanced Architectural Design, Acoustics and Music Technology, and more. The scope for collaboration, performance, and even more advanced study is enormous. To make you a culturally informed and well-rounded individual, and to increase interdisciplinary awareness, your field of study will be placed within a wider context of cultural, critical, technological, philosophical, and musical study.
The programme's focus is primarily musical and artistic, with direct intended careers being composer and sonic/digital artist/performer. The programme's interdisciplinary aspect also leads naturally into music-technology based and related fields such as:
- soundware engineer
- multimedia developer
- film/tv composition
- music programmer
- web content provider
- digital audio editor
- teacher
- researcher
- etc. etc.
The programme aims to develop:
- well-rounded digital musicians/composers with cutting-edge technological expertise and laptop performance experience
- the ability to translate musical ideas into fascinating compositions created with fully-functioning self-programmed interactive computer music software
- the ability to plan, execute, use, and document a music-technology project
- the ability to reflect on one's creative work in light of past and present cultural developments
- a variety of interdisciplinary skills ranging across music composition and performance, computer science, and cultural studies.
- computer music composition and performance
- real-time computer music programming (e.g. Max/MSP)
- non-real time computer music programming (e.g. CLM)
- algorithmic composition
- electroacoustic composition
- human-computer interaction
- the key philosophical ideas that have informed our understanding of the digital age
recent postings on
DCP BB
re: : Hi Lauren, I've just sussed it actually. My issue was arising when I was trying to tidy the code funnily enough. It turns out I was closing the setf function straight after I set the duration, but the srt is also set within that function call, so that was preventing the code from compiling. A...
re: Case Example: Hi, As requested, here is the case example I showed today: [link] (see bottom of the page). So, all I did was use case to select different samples from a set of pre-declared variables, holding sample file names. Cheers, Lauren
re: : Hi Dave, Can you remind me what the question was, again? Also, can you tidy it up a bit? You can combine a lot of your addition: (+ x y z) is better than (+ x (+ y z)), unless there's a good reason for not doing this. Cheers, Lauren
re: todays issue!: (with-sound (:channels 1 :scaled-to .99) (let ((time 0.0) (time2 0.1)VARY TO OFFSET SAMPLE2 START TIME (time3 0.2) (duration 0.0) (duration2 0.0) (srt 1.0) ...
re: : Thank you Lauren, works like magic! Cheers, Ana
re: : Hi Ana, You've just got the mylist in the wrong place. You need to tell nth two things: firstly the reference (which you're doing by choosing a random number up to the list length) but you need to say which list you want the list-length of! Then you need to tell it which list to look through. Ema...
re: shuffling through a list with 'nth': Hi everyone, I was trying to recreate an example from class today (with little success). I'm trying to work with musical modes by transposing a C note using fixed values from a list (representing the number of semitones that I want to transpose). I already defined the st2srt function and so far s...
re: : If the context is that it helps the artist, but it's never seen/heard by anyone else, it's little more than self medication. Which is fine, but something different to art meant for an audience. To me, art without audience is pointless. And that is true by definition - if I'm not the artist or the au...
MarcoDonnarumma
14/2/2012 15:32
re: : Regarding the DJ-set, I think that one needs to consider the motivations. For example, if one looks at it as music to facilitate dancing and drinking (not being the "end goal" by itself), he/she would have to think of the same for music written and performed by a string quartet at a restaurant while...
re: : 2) Must a composer have all the tools of the trade at their disposal? I.e. orchestration, instrumentation, harmony, counterpoint, sequencing, performance, conducting, etc. etc. E.g. if you called a plumber and s/he told you they don't do blocked drains, you might call them something else other than ...