This week’s assignments is designed to familiarize you with the terminal software and hardware available in the studios.
Access the Unix terminal (Applications–>Utilities–>Terminal) and begin to learn to use its utilities and environment for music. Documentation is available for each. For basic unix commands and their “soundfile directory” equivalents, see the Basic Unix Commands page. To explore using the in-terminal examples I mentioned in class, see the Score11 Quickstart Guide. I will make hard copies available in studio on the main desk.
I am supplying, below, several articles about the piece, but you should feel free to explore on your own separately from my article curation, including things like Chowning’s homepage at CCRMA and interviews and articles that abound. Some of the articles will be quite technical and may include methods and ways of thinking that are unfamiliar. These are invitations for your further investigation, either on your own or through questions you bring to the seminar.
- First, where it all started, the foundational article I mentioned by Max Matthews, The Digital Computer as a Musical Instrument.
- Also, a description of the CARL system, by Gareth Loy
- Chowning’s own Fifty Years of Computer Music: Ideas of the Past Speak to the Future, which mentions the piece but also reiterates the historical context of its development.
- Laura Zattra’s The Assembling of Stria by John Chowning: A Philological Investigation, with extensive information about the origins of the piece, including “scores” and other materials.
- Matteo Meneghini’s Stria, by John Chowning: Analysis of the Compositional Process, a view of the compositional procedures.
- Olivier Baudouin’s A Reconstruction of Stria, as well as his follow-up, Stria by John Chowning-Last Improvements. updating the the software discussed in the first article.
- Kevin Dahan’s Reconstructing Stria is about the specific implementation you are playing back in CsoundQT!