Abstract
The history of music can be understood as the increasing digitalization of representation and processing of musical information as notes and sounds. Musical phenomena could be described as a continuous transition from the analog and simple instrument like a wood block to the digital and abstract software instrument like a virtual synthesizer on a touchpad. The development of musical instruments shows an increase in complexity and functionality of handicraft over time, and the music computer forms the last, most comprehensive and most abstract link in a chain of innumerable steps in music and musical technology, starting with the human voice and the invention of drums as a mean of sound and communication and actually marked by digital instruments and virtual sound worlds. Ten developmental stages can be identified with regard to the construction and the usage of musical instruments and multimedia performances. The digital processing of sound information extends the range of artistic presentation of musical processes to unfamiliar, albeit intriguing and expandable dimensions. The aesthetic potential of the artistic approach to musical and multimedia information in the broadest sense proves to be enormous. But it is impossible to predict whether overarching paradigms of music composing and digital culture will emerge or become apparent some day.
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Digitalization transgresses the boundaries of the physically possible, the natural becomes the arbitrary, the arbitrary is being artificially created.
Jauk (2009, p. 439)
Authorized translation of the article “Vom Idiophon zum Touchpad. Die musiktechnologische Entwicklung zum virtuellen Musikinstrument” (in Musik/Medien/Kunst, ed. Beate Flath, 55–74. Bielefeld: transcript 2013) from German by Andrea Kampmann (including quotes).
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- 1.
- 2.
Their Erdenklang: Computerakustische Klangsinfonie was premiered in the Brucknerhaus in Linz during the Ars Electronica in 1982.
- 3.
MIDI (=Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a music-specific standard format which not only enjoyed popularity in musical application for a long period, but which furthermore gained a foothold in general computer industry as a standard interface. With regard to its significance, it is therefore comparable to the internationally widespread digital formats PCM for the audio CD introduced in 1981 or the ever more important compressed audio format MP3 used for web transmissions since 1991.
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Cf. Arne Bense’s revealing and comprehensive discussion of the complex relationship between real and virtual components of computer-based instruments in Bense (2013).
- 5.
In 1930, Karl Gerstberger, a contemporary of Léon Theremin’s, attempted to put into words the speechlessness of the listeners, who had probably never seen a thereminvox performance before: “Who would have been immune to the spell of the uncanny, as L. Theremin performed his ether wave music? Was is not as in a tale from the Arabian Nights, when he summoned with a conjurer’s hands the ‘genie in a bottle’ and bade him utter sounds loud and soft, high and low?” (Gerstberger 1930, p. 171).
- 6.
Cf. Jin Hyun Kim’s detailed compilation of the different developmental strands of musical interfaces from historical and systematic perspective, including functional analyses: Kim (2012).
- 7.
Among the applications available are for instance the “old” Fairlight CMI as well as the “new” reacTable as virtual emulations on current touchpads, albeit with certain limitations.
- 8.
Frauke Behrendt, for instance, examines the artistic relevance of mobile phone music in Behrendt (2005).
- 9.
Cf. the chronological examination of the musical technological development and its musical consequences, ranging from the professional—originally analog—multitrack studio to digital home recording on the PC. Also cf. the current analysis of the reciprocal interaction between music and technology by Wandler (2012).
- 10.
Already 1995 impressively put into action by Dominique Besson on the multimedia CD-ROM “Les Musicographies,” (Besson 1995), which unfortunately only runs on older Macintosh computers.
- 11.
Cf. Gjeertsen’s video “Amateur” (Gjeertsen 2006).
- 12.
E.g. Hatsune Miku (2011).
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Enders, B. (2017). From Idiophone to Touchpad. The Technological Development to the Virtual Musical Instrument. In: Bovermann, T., de Campo, A., Egermann, H., Hardjowirogo, SI., Weinzierl, S. (eds) Musical Instruments in the 21st Century. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2951-6_4
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