animated notation dot com

Big week in Perth, Australia! Starting Thursday, December 6th is this year's edition of Australasian Computer Music Association [ACMA] in conjunction with the Musicological Society of Australia [MSA] and the 17th Symposium on Indigenous Music and Dance. Lots of great stuff on the schedule (link below) including quite a few papers and performances of specific interest to the topic of this site.

Check out the schedule here: http://www.msa.org.au/edit/conference_pdfs/MSA%20Master%20Schedule%2001%20Dec%207pm.pdf

The incomparable Decibel ensemble presented Revolution on Monday in Perth, Australia, featuring works in which the turntable played a distinct roll. Performed works included the Australian premiere of For four groups of instruments by Milan Knizak, Agerasia by Chris De Groot, Imaginary Landscapes no. 5 by John Cage, the Australian premiere of Cat Hopes U Mangibeddu Nostru, world premieres of Ryan Ross Smith's Study no. 58, Annika Moses' V.K.W. 96.1FM and Lindsay Vickery's agitation techniques in a closed system, closing with a rousing reinterpretation of the Velvet Underground's The Gift. It was an absolute pleasure to be involved in this concert as a composer AND last-minute performer in Cat Hope's piece.

Stay tuned: Decibel performs again this week at the ACMC in Perth!

Very excited to announce that the call for works, papers, etc. is now open for TENOR 2019, which is being held in Melbourne, Australia this year!

Check it out here: https://www.monash.edu/tenor2019/call-for-contributions

This falls a bit outside the self-imposed content limitations of this website, but as someone who sees value in the democratization of music participation (if for some reason you want to read more about this, see my dissertation, 2016), products like Toneroll (and melodics [below]) enable music making across a wide range of abilities without breaking the bank.

Check it out here: https://toneroll.com/

NewMusicBox article about realtime networked notation featuring a handful of video demos and explanation.

Check it out here: https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/from-the-machine-realtime-networked-notation/

I suppose this is kind of like an ad for Melodics, but y'know what?! That's OK! I tried out Melodics last year after seeing some of the best fingers drummers in Europe compete at the Sample Music Festival in Berlin. Very effective side scroller.

Check it out here: https://melodics.com/

Link below to a new work by composer Julie Herndon that uses video projection as the musical score. Plenty of information as to how the score functions, and hopefully there will be a video recording of a performance soon.

Check it out here: https://elevateensemble.com/blog/julie-herndon-on-using-video-projection-as-a-musical-score/

ORCHESTRA2020.COM is a web application under development to enable performances of novel music for mobile phone orchestra. The web application is providing the musical instruments (performer) and animated music notation (conductor) for the compositions to perform. Initiated and developed by Swedish composer Anders Lind in collaboration with Studio with and Björn Yttergren. Max was used to create an animated notation system, which gives performance instructions for six individual parts of the mobile phone orchestra (Orchestra 2020). No musical knowledge is required to participate in a performance. (https://cycling74.com/projects/orchestra-2020-animated-notation-for-mobile-phone-orchestra)

Check it out here: http://orchestra2020.com/

Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson reflects on 10 years of using animated notation!

As part of the education package provided to Primary schools, Jellybeans Music provides animated notation for specialist and non-specialist teachers. Animated notation is exactly what it sounds like: using an interactive whiteboard or large screen, notes change colour as it is their turn to play, and synced with the audio track. This is a unique tool that Jellybeans Music (and our publishing arm, Jozzbeat Music) have created. It enables students and teachers of little or no prior music experience, to easily follow music notation. (http://www.myjellybeansmusic.com/portfolio/MCUI)

Check it out here: http://www.myjellybeansmusic.com/portfolio/MCUI

Opposite Earth, performed by PLoRK [Princeton Laptop Orchestra]

From YouTube: This is an animated notation piece for an open instrumentation. It was written for PLOrk in 2016 and can be performed by a combination of acoustic and electronic musicians. The graphic score is realized using the p5 javascript library. The conductor changes the image components live to guide the course of the piece. For instance, the conductor can add and remove rings (performers), planets (pitches), and ticks (percussive sounds) at will. The color of the lines conveys which of five possible pitch gamuts is used. Moons are played by the same performers that are handling the planet they orbit around.

Well, it has been quite a long time since I've posted anything here, so if you're still checking out the site, thanks! I have recently moved to Melbourne, Australia to be a Lecturer in Composition and Music Technology at Monash University. Beyond the obvious (Melbourne!) my new proximity to some of the leaders in the Animated Notation world (Cat Hope, Lindsay Vickery, David Kim-Boyle, Aaron Wyatt) has inspired me to return to the site and dust things off a bit.

To kick things back off, here is a 3 hour version of the score for Study no. 38.

In honor of PI DAY I am posting my Study no. 45 [Lecture2: On Pi], for 3 speakers and optional electronics.

Björk taps Stephen Malinowski again for his animated notation/music visualization as featured on Björk's Biophilia App and across the youtubeosphere. Click here for some videos at consequenceofsound.net.

Paris, France, 29-30 May 2015

University of Paris-Sorbonne / Ircam

The deadline to submit papers is January 31.

For more information, click here.

The December, 2014 issue of Organized Sound features a number of articles relevant to the topic of animated music notation, real-time score generation, etc. Authors include Lindsay Vickery, David Kim-Boyle, Filipe Lopes, Lonce Wyse and Jude Yew, Thor Magnusson, Arne Eigenfeldt and others. Click here to be redirected to Cambridge University Press.

Three things: Firstly, my posts have not been appearing in a timely-fashion. I think I have solved this. Secondly, I have been working toward making the site more flexible, more searchable, generally easier to deal with. As always, if anyone has thoughts on what they might like to see, please let me know. And lastly, I have been thinking about journal and conference paper format and stylization, its impact on content, tone, etc., and wondering what options might exist beyond both the established format(s)/event(s) and the database format (academia.edu, etc.)

Nick Collins' Chasing Visuals. Click here to see the score [runs in the browser].

Paul Turowski's Hyperions for solo instrument. Click here for more information on Paul's work, or find him under the composers tab.

Josten Myburgh's Dedications, for voices, chamber ensemble, and 8 speakers. Click here for more information on Josten's work, or find him under the composers tab.

Paris, France, 29-30 May 2015

University of Paris-Sorbonne / Ircam

The first International Conference on New Technologies for Music Notation and Representation is dedicated to issues in theoretical and applied research and development in Music Notation and Representation, with a strong focus on computer tools and applications, as well as a tight connection to music creation.

Until very recently, the support provided by the computer music to the field of symbolic notation remained fairly conventional. However, recent developments indicate that the field of tools for musical notation is now moving towards new forms of representation. Moreover, musical notation, transcription, sonic visualization, and musical representation are often associated in the fields of musical analysis, ethnology, and acoustics. The aim of this conference is to explore all of recent mutations of notation and representation in all domains of music.

For more information, click here.

André Vida in The Wire, documenting his Moving Scores installation at Eyebeam, NYC. Click here for more information.

THE MAX MAESTRO is an animated notation system for choir/ crowd of people, which was developed within the artistic research project VOICES OF UMEÅ by Anders Lind, composer, CD at the Department of Creative studies/ Umeå university/ Sweden. It runs as a standalone application, created in MAX/MSP and is controlled by a midi interface and an Ipad. By using simple animated graphics on a screen, instead of a complex notated score the main ideas was to: 1. Enable common people without score reading skills to participate in complex performances for choir/ crowd of people. 2. Enable a choir/ crowd of common people to be synchronized with an electronic part in a performance without the need of a human conductor. 3. Enable live-improvisation with a choir/ crowd of common people. 4. Minimise the rehearsal time for a complex composition involving electronics and a crowd of common people performing live on stage. [Description from cycling74 website] Click here for more information.

Lindsay Vickery talks about workshopping Semantics of Redaction with percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson.

Golan Levin's Scrapple [2005], an installation/performance piece/object, incorporates an animated or active notation into its functionality and presentation.

Daniel Godinez Nivon's Tiquio-rolas, an animated score of sorts, described by Nivon as follows: "The drawings are scores generated by the collective interaction in meetings held at the Assembly of Indigenous Migrants in Mexico City (AMI) so that later the Philharmonic Band interprets Indigenous Children in an improvisation. It is a metaphor for the transformation of Tequio in the city, as the music keeps children interpret elements of their peoples." [https://vimeo.com/56654737, accessed 6.13.2014 (Google translation)]

Check out Lindsay Vickery's investigation of reading and scrolling rates regarding fixed and animated notation here.

Looks like there could be some interesting notation-based conversations happening at NIME this year. According the official release, the workshop will be held in two parts:

1. Overview of the notation history, tools, uses and problematics: Building a map of the different approaches, in interaction with invited participants and with the audience will be the main focus of this part. Online tools for mind mapping will be made available to allow remote participation.

2. Practices and applications: This second part is intended to take advantage of the NIME context to involve, discover and question the notation issues related to new instruments, including also live coding perspectives. For this part, we are interested in artistic experiences as well as in technical approaches. Demonstrations will be welcome, whether based on tools or new instruments, including electronics.

For more information, click here.

Thanks to Roger Dannenberg for pointing this piece out to me, certainly along the tongue-in-cheek lines of Sender's Tropical Fish Opera and Moran's Divertissement Number One.

Here is a short quote from the NY Times article, 2.14.1982: "In Don Buchla's ''Q,'' musical rules were most clearly defined. Each player corresponded to a numbered pool ball. Mr. Buchla, as the 8-ball, used a pool cue to keep score on strung counters, directing chattering instrumental collisions. Lights flashed in an electrified pool rack. Then, on film, a pool table labeled with staves became the ''score'' for the instruments." Edward Rothstein.

For Rothstein's full article, click here.

Time has decided not to be on my side these last few months, but with some looming deadlines on the verge of completion, ANDC will return to *high* on the priority list. Thank you to those of you who have started and/or continued to send me your work. I look forward to including it on ANDC as soon as possible.

Ingamells describes this performance as follows: "Giant 5-line stave made from bungee chords attached to the four columns of the atrium. Five giant clusters of helium balloons floating in the space. Clusters are attached to ropes that can be pulled by visitors to the library (pulled like ringing church bells). A choir stands outside the space, reading the moving clusters as ever changing melodic lines."

Exhibition Text: "The exhibition is also brought to life by Ringing Out, a specially-made three-dimensional score intervention by artist Beth Derbyshire and composer / artist Andy Ingamells. Balloons are displayed during moments of happiness and celebration, much like the ringing of church bells. The ringing of church bells doesn’t offer the same visual spectacle, though bell ringers use a visual system known as ‘rope sight’ to keep them in sequence. Bellringing takes place away from the gaze of those who hear it, leaving just the sound resonating outwards from the bell tower. Beth Derbyshire and Andy Ingamells bring ringing out of the towers and into the Library of Birmingham, suspending a giant multi-coloured cluster of helium balloons that can be moved and changed by pulling on long ropes. The changes in the cluster will be read as musical notation by a live choir, filling the library with celebratory sounds. If you would like to ring the cluster, then gather a team of friends and visit the library during the SCORE exhibition."

Performance date: 3.22.2014

Click here for more information about the event.

Click here for more information about Andy.

nature forms I

Click here for more information.

Ramus

Click here for more information.

Do Desenho e do Som

The software “Do Desenho e do Som” includes ideas collected since 2009, both theoretical and pratical. It is a real-time graphical score environment, enabling one to “compose” music in real-time with some amount of control and expectations. In such systems, I find compeling to be able to induce musical gestures and rhythm flow, as opposed to be able to notate exact music."^[1]

You can find more information here

1. "Do Desenho e do Som," vimeo.com, accessed February 23, 2014, http://vimeo.com/85774065.

Tuning the Threnoscope

The Threnoscope is a compositional system created by ixi audio (ixi-audio.net), for drones, live coding and microtonal composition. The system is still in early stages of development but will be released in the future.^[1]

You can find more information here

1. "Tuning the Threnoscope," vimeo.com, accessed February 20, 2014, http://vimeo.com/75380587.

Páll Ivan Pálsson's Hreindýr nýs árs

Thanks to the incomparable Jesper Pedersen, I will be adding quite a few new compositions to the 'Works' and 'Composers' pages!

Today I am looking at Solarbeat 01 by Whitevinyl [aka Luke Twyman] (thanks for pointing this out Jesper)

The Whitney Music Box (realized by Jim Bumgardner).

And a few spinner notations by:

Jesper Pedersen

Justin Wen-Lo Yang

Páll Ivan Pálsson

*a slight delay, but...* The site is now live! Please let me know of any errors you find, or requests for additions, via the contact page.

This site was created as a portal by which I could organize and easily access my research into animated music notation. It eventually became the online version of my literature review and reading list for my in-process PhD at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, made available to friends and advisors only. In the spirit of Páll Ivan Pálsson's animatednotation.blogspot.com, ubuweb.com, and visualcomplexity.com, I have decided to make animatednotation.com [albeit massively slimmed down for the time-being] available to the public. I consider this site [as well as this field] to be a work-in-progress [thanks to the depth of work out there], and I hope this site will become a place for research, promotion, discussion, and the creation of a global community.

I want to thank my friends in S.L.Á.T.U.R. and Decibel for their valuable input, as well as those who have contributed to the animated notation Facebook group. It is within this community spirit that I humbly ask you to please let me know a) what mistakes need to be fixed (particularly within the 'works' and 'composers' pages), b) composers who are working in this field that should be represented here, and c) your newest composition/performance/ensemble that might fit in with the nature of this site.