Subject: Re: "Traditional" Scoring for Electronic Music
From: Kevin Austin (kevin.austin@videotron.ca)
Date: Thu Apr 27 2006 - 23:18:19 EDT
Hi
I'm lost (and perhaps a bit confused) on your use of some terms.
By 'scoring' do you mean "notation" or 'arranging' ... as in 'scored
for string quartet'?
Electronic music could mean MIDI keyboards playing pitches. Do you
use the term in a wider context?
From the next part of your post, it appears to me that you are
refering (largely) to MIDI-based (object) events ... the kinds of
pieces that could be largely represented by a MIDI file.
There are (more or less) two kinds of notation in use, ones that use
'symbols' to represent events (as happens with traditional western
notation, and those that use time-based graphics, such as a
spectrogram.
Western notation is 'symbol' based, for as you can see in a bar of
4/4, there is a space between the barline and the first quarter note,
but there is no silence, as the quarter note is not showing "time".
One of the most powerful ways to get performers to be "a bit less
open" in their interpretation is to provide a recording of the
'basics' of what you want done. This is to an extent done in some
jazz charts where the chord symbols are given and the performer uses
these as 'limits' on their interpretative latitude.
Best
Kevin
At 11:14 AM -0500 06 04 27, Ryan Supak wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I've been tinkering with the idea of adapting traditional scoring
>methods for electronic music that is performed live.
>
>Obviously some analogies from traditional scores apply better than
>others, however. Electronic music tends to have more moving
>envelopes and less moving notes, for instance. Motifs that repeat
>and change slightly occur fairly frequently in certain kinds of
>electronic music -- I think something like a "Jazz Chart" could be
>useful for notating this.
>
>I know that self-devised graphical scores have been used on a lot of
>occasions for this kind of thing, but I'm more interested in using
>something a bit more standard, and widely-understood -- and a bit
>less open to interpretation.
>
>Thanks for any thoughts -- even peripheral ones!
>rs
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