Modular composition environment: A tool for improvisation of conventional electronic music.

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School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
Location:
P1 OPINNÄYTTEET D 2018 Aldunate Infante
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Authors

Date

2018

Department

Department of Media
Median laitos

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

New Media Design and Production

Language

en

Pages

149

Series

Abstract

This production thesis sets out to create a tool for live improvisation of music that allows musicians to create and modulate musical patterns in real-time and reduces the need for pre-recorded or pre-sequenced material. It starts by defining the scope of *conventional electronic music* and then explores the shortcomings of current tools in relation to the divergency of music making. The project is based on the author's previous experiences in the live improvisation of conventional electronic music, and thus it starts by surveying the currently existing tools. After that, it focuses on the iterative design process of modular environment, taking the modular synthesizer as a conceptual starting point. These processes led to the development of composition devices which are expressed through a hardware user interface, in a modular environment. This project finds that the shortcomings in divergency of current music improvisation tools come from the fact that musical modulations in an improvisation tool are inherently limited by the available procedures of any given system. While composition tools such as modular synthesizers lack this limitation they do not have the discrete musical abstractions required for conventional electronic music. The production project thus focuses on the design of a modular environment that could permit re-purposing of procedures that process discrete musical events. The outcome of this project is a new performance environment that can be used to generate more diverse improvisations of conventional electronic music.

Description

Supervisor

Reunanen, Markku

Thesis advisor

Tahiroğlu, Koray

Keywords

NIME, electronic music, product design, improvisation, divergency, new media, dance music, clubbing

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https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201812126404

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[master] Taiteiden ja suunnittelun korkeakoulu / ARTS