chapter 6 and Chapter 7

I apologize ahead of time if my notes don't make that much sense, I'm sick and it's a little hard trying to say exactly what I mean.

Chapter 6: Early Synthesizers and Experimenters:

Transistors- take the place of vacuum tubes because of:

1. Their small size
2. Their minimal weight.  
3. The process for making them is very cheap because they're completely automated.  
4. There is also no warm up time 
5. They take less power and more efficient, 
6. They have a longer life than vacuum tubes, 
7. And they are insensitive to shock.

RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer

• Was used as a means for pre-programming the basic properties of tone, pitch, amplitude, envelope, timbre, glide, frequency, filtering, and reverb
• all of these parameters were pre-programmed by using a punch card
• Mark I- output direct to loudspeaker and turntable lathe
• Mark II- was 3 tons, 7ft tall, 20ft long and had 1700 vacuum tubes

Chapter 7

Helmholtz determined that a single musical note contains a fundamental or base tone accompanied by related harmonics above.  Harmonics of a tone are responsible for creating timbre or tone color.

Cage tried to emancipate the concept of music from the Western theory.

Determined 5 components of sound:

1. Frequency- audible in electronic music based on how fast needle moves. Measured in Hz
2. Amplitude- measured in Db
3. Timbre- how we perceive a waveform's complexity
4. Duration- acoustic instruments have a limited ability to sustain sound, electronic instruments sustain indefinitely making duration the key element.
5. Envelope- Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release

Partials, overtones, and harmonics are basically synonymous.

Waveforms-

• Sine wave- pure signal no harmonics
• Square wave- contains only odd harmonics
• Triangle wave- also contain only odd harmonics
• Sawtooth wave- contains both odd and even harmonics
• White noise- random signals

Electroacoustic music- refers to music that integrates sounds from the natural world with audio processing as well as synth. sounds.

• music created using electronic and acoustic sound sources
• synth. techniques both analog and digital

Microphones and Audio Feedback

• Dynamic
• Condensor
• Contact
• Ribbon

The first use of feedback on a rock record that was actually used as part of the song, was in The Beatles' 'I Feel Fine'.

Robert Ashley (b. 1930)- The Wolfman (1964) manipulates feedback using a speaker, mic, amplifier, and recorder.

Alex Vittum Lecture:

Alex Vittum is a technician for Don Buchla, an innovator in synthesizers.  He came in today and gave a lecture/presentation of some of the work he has been doing in Electroacoustic music and trying to use it for percussion instruments. The presentation was really awesome to watch because he showed a program that, to me, was new and how the program works and some of its features.  The first piece he played was really interesting because he used a saw blade in it, which played a sound that I never knew a saw blade could play; this piece was played using a combination of frequency shifter (I believe) and reverb. The other two pieces Vittum performed were using granular synthesis and tap delay.  For both the granular synthesis and tap delay, Vittum took 1 signal and split it into 4 different voices, each containing different pitch volume, length, and rates of playback; the granular piece also contained an 8 second buffer. The piece I found the most interesting was the tap delay because after a while, it just sounded like one continuous sound with no breaks in between.  The sound ended up being really intense and it made me wonder what it must have been like for Alex, since he had two speakers directly behind him.