Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and application of new and existing computer software technologies and basic aspects of music, such as sound synthesis, digital signal processing, sound design, sonic diffusion, acoustics, electrical engineering, and psychoacoustics. The field of computer music can trace its roots back to the origins of electronic music, and the first experiments and innovations with electronic instruments at the turn of the 20th century.
"Fat Man" was the codename for the type of nuclear weapon the United States detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the first being Little Boy, and its detonation marked the third nuclear explosion in history. It was built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium from the Hanford Site, and was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.
Rhythm generally means a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time can apply to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or frequency of anything from microseconds to several seconds ; to several minutes or hours, or, at the most extreme, even over many years.
In astronomy, the interstellar medium (ISM) is the matter and radiation that exist in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, as well as dust and cosmic rays. It fills interstellar space and blends smoothly into the surrounding intergalactic space. The energy that occupies the same volume, in the form of electromagnetic radiation, is the interstellar radiation field. Although the density of atoms in the ISM is usually far below that in the best laboratory vacuums, the mean free path between collisions is short compared to typical interstellar lengths, so on these scales the ISM behaves as a gas (more precisely, as a plasma: it is everywhere at least slightly ionized), responding to pressure forces, and not as a collection of non-interacting particles.
Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis method that operates on the microsound time scale.
Glitch is a genre of electronic music that emerged in the 1990s which is distinguished by the deliberate use of glitch-based audio media and other sonic artifacts.
In music, montage or sound collage is a technique where newly branded sound objects or compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as montage. This is often done through the use of sampling, while some playable sound collages were produced by gluing together sectors of different vinyl records. In any case, it may be achieved through the use of previous sound recordings or musical scores. Like its visual cousin, the collage work may have a completely different effect than that of the component parts, even if the original parts are completely recognizable or from only one source.
Kanata is a suburb and former city within Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is located about 22 km (14 mi) west of the city's downtown core. As of 2021, the former City of Kanata had a population of 98,938, with the population centre having a population of 137,118. Before it was amalgamated into Ottawa in 2001, it was one of the fastest-growing cities in Canada and the fastest-growing community in Eastern Ontario. Located just to the west of the National Capital Commission Greenbelt, it is one of the largest of several communities that surround central Ottawa.
Programming is a form of music production and performance using electronic devices and computer software, such as sequencers and workstations or hardware synthesizers, sampler and sequencers, to generate sounds of musical instruments. These musical sounds are created through the use of music coding languages. There are many music coding languages of varying complexity. Music programming is also frequently used in modern pop and rock music from various regions of the world, and sometimes in jazz and contemporary classical music. It gained popularity in the 1950s and has been emerging ever since.
A cloud is a visible mass of condensed droplets or frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere.
Atomic Mouse is a talking animal superhero created in 1953 by Al Fago for Charlton Comics.
Within the atmospheric sciences, atmospheric physics is the application of physics to the study of the atmosphere. Atmospheric physicists attempt to model Earth's atmosphere and the atmospheres of the other planets using fluid flow equations, radiation budget, and energy transfer processes in the atmosphere. In order to model weather systems, atmospheric physicists employ elements of scattering theory, wave propagation models, cloud physics, statistical mechanics and spatial statistics which are highly mathematical and related to physics. It has close links to meteorology and climatology and also covers the design and construction of instruments for studying the atmosphere and the interpretation of the data they provide, including remote sensing instruments. At the dawn of the space age and the introduction of sounding rockets, aeronomy became a subdiscipline concerning the upper layers of the atmosphere, where dissociation and ionization are important.
A phase vocoder is a type of vocoder-purposed algorithm which can interpolate information present in the frequency and time domains of audio signals by using phase information extracted from a frequency transform. The computer algorithm allows frequency-domain modifications to a digital sound file.
Curtis Roads is an American composer, author and computer programmer. He composes electronic and electroacoustic music, specializing in granular and pulsar synthesis.
Gérard Pape is a composer of electronic music, author, and Lacanian psychologist. He is a former student of David Winkler, George Cacioppo, William Albright, and George Balch Wilson. He became the director of Les Ateliers UPIC in 1991 and in 2015 authored a French-English bi-lingual book Musipoesc: Writings About Music that was published by Éditions Michel de Maule. Pape has lived and worked in France since the early 1990s.
In music a time point or timepoint is "an instant, analogous to a geometrical point in space". Because it has no duration, it literally cannot be heard, but it may be used to represent "the point of initiation of a single pitch, the repetition of a pitch, or a pitch simultaneity", therefore the beginning of a sound, rather than its duration. It may also designate the release of a note or the point within a note at which something changes. Other terms often used in music theory and analysis are attack point and starting point. Milton Babbitt calls the distance from one time point, attack, or starting point to the next a time-point interval, independent of the durations of the sounding notes which may be either shorter than the time-point interval, or longer. Charles Wuorinen shortens this expression to just time interval. Other writers use the terms attack interval, or, interval of entry, interval of entrance, or starting interval.
In musique concrete and electronic music theory the term sound object is used to refer to a primary unit of sonic material and often specifically refers to recorded sound rather than written music using manuscript or a score. It was coined by Pierre Schaeffer in his publication Traité des objets musicaux (1966).
Concret PH (1958) is a musique concrète piece by Iannis Xenakis, originally created for the Philips Pavilion at the Expo 58 and heard as audiences entered and exited the building. Edgard Varèse's Poème électronique was played once they were inside the building.
A duration row or duration series is an ordering of a set of durations, in analogy with the tone row or twelve-tone set.
nscor is a 1980 electronic composition by Curtis Roads. The piece is built upon multiple synthesis methods and was composed at different studios during a period of five years. It was included on the 1986 compilation album New Computer Music released by WERGO, and the inclusion of the piece on the album was generally positively received by critics.
