(Grinstead 128 is in the inside hallway going north from the foyer to Hart Recital Hall.)
- Hubert Howe • Overtone Music • Lecture with musical examples • Stereo • 20+5
- Ryan Gaston • PATCH: Computer Language Design in Donald Buchla’s Instruments • Stereo • 20+5
- Jon Forshee • Synthesizer Works of Éliane Radigue: Compositional Design and Pitch-class Consciousness in Long Duration Music • 20+5
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Overtone Music
Lecture with musical examples
Hubert Howe
The fact that a collection of related frequencies is perceived as a single tone with a distinct timbre is a fact of musical perception, and a rich source for musical invention. Electroacoustic music allows us to compose directly with overtones, which can produce some astonishing sounds. I will show how natural overtones relate to the tempered scale and demonstrate how individual overtones can create melodies and harmonies. Another issue is whether the fundamental can be perceived from the presentation of an arbitrary collection of overtones. I will demonstrate several individual sounds to illustrate different concepts of using overtones. The possibility of melodies and harmonies among overtones can create different levels of pitch structure in music, as among the fundamentals and the overtones. Finally, I will play a composition based on these ideas that includes many of the points discussed.
Hubert Howe was educated at Princeton University, where he studied with J. K. Randall, Godfrey Winham and Milton Babbitt, and from which he received the A.B., M.F.A. and Ph.D. degrees. He was one of the first researchers in computer music and became Professor of Music and Director of the Electronic Music studios at Queens College of the City University of New York. He also taught at the Juilliard School from 1974 to 1994. In 1988-89 he held the Endowed Chair in Music at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. From 1989 to 1998, 2001 to 2002, and Fall 2007, he was Director of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. He is a member of the Society of Composers, Inc., the American Composers Alliance, the International Computer Music Association, SEAMUS, the Long Island Composers Alliance, and the New York Composers Circle. In 2009, he founded the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and he continues as Director. Recordings of his computer music have been released by Capstone Records (Overtone Music, CPS-8678, Filtered Music, CPS-8719, and Temperamental Music and Created Sounds, CPS- 8771), Ravello Records (Clusters, RR 7817 and Improvisation on the Undertone Series, RR8043) and Centaur Records (Harmonic and Inharmonic Fantasies, CRC 3579).
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PATCH: Computer Language Design in Donald Buchla’s Instruments
Ryan Gaston
Donald Buchla (1937–2016) was an American composer, physicist, and musical instrument designer. In his lifetime, he intentionally operated along the fringes of both academia and the music industry. Today, though, his 1960s and 1970s Series 100 and Series 200 instrumentation have become a common point of reference in the growing area of commercial modular synthesizer design.
However, Buchla’s modular systems represent a small portion of his life’s work. From the late 1960s onward, he turned his focus toward the use of computers in standalone musical instruments and composition ecosystems—including the development of composer-friendly computer languages designed to facilitate experiments in artistic human/machine interaction.
In this presentation, we will clarify Buchla’s place in the development of computer music in the 1970s and 1980s. We will present the history of PATCH, a nearly-forgotten series of software languages developed by Buchla, D. N. “Lynx” Crowe, and others over 20 years. We will offer explanations of PATCH’s general structure, workflow, and approaches to structuring performative interaction—as well as an assessment of the ways the language changed as Buchla’s hardware designs evolved. The presentation includes newly-created audio and video demonstrations of relevant instruments from the 300, 400, and 700 series.
This talk was prepared in collaboration with The Buchla Archives (Vancouver, BC, Canada), an independent organization dedicated to the thoughtful preservation of Buchla’s work. The Buchla Archives holds and maintains the world’s only fully functional collection of Buchla’s computer-based instruments, along with supporting documentation and associated hardware. Together, we are working toward the creation of a book documenting Buchla’s life, music, and the design trajectory of his instruments.Ryan Gaston (b. 1990) is a performer/composer, instrument designer, and writer who makes devices and music that combine sonic elements of noise, free improvisation, and experimental electroacoustic music. Gaston’s creative work explores temporal perception by using chaotic electronic structures as the conceptual basis for both electronic instruments and compositions. His writing focuses on the history and techniques of experimental electronic music and electronic musical instrument design, with a special focus on American west coast trends in the second half of the 20th century.
Gaston holds an MFA in Music Composition and Experimental Sound Practices from the California Institute of the Arts (2016) as well as a BA in Music Composition from Hendrix College (2012). He is the editor of and frequent contributor to Signal, an online publication managed by California-based electronic musical instrument retailer Perfect Circuit. Since 2023, Gaston has also worked closely with The Buchla Archives, a historical initiative dedicated to documenting the life and work of instrument designer/composer/sound artist Donald Buchla.
Synthesizer Works of Éliane Radigue:
Compositional Design and Pitch-class Consciousness in Long Duration Music
Jon Forshee
Music of long duration, frequently referred to as drone music, occupies an increasingly prolific field of compositional activity in the 21st-century, and offers fresh fields of inquiry to the music analyst. However, analytic practices available for articulating the compositional designs and musical experiences of these works are still evolving. Additional strategies for analysis include concepts from the set-theoretic literature, as well as languages and perspectives indigenous to the listeners’ and performer’s experiences of this music. The recent acoustic works of French composer Éliane Radigue offer vibrant opportunities for the engagement of analytic approaches indigenous to music of long duration. The notions of temporal scale, of pitch-class design and of timbre contour are enticing as palpable dimensions and as formal design features of much of this music. Radigue’s concept of ‘scaffolding’, as it pertains to compositional design, illustrates the strategy around and rationing of these three overarching lines of inquiry. Two of the composer’s synthesizer works, 5 Songs of Milarepa (1983) and Kyema (1988), provide dynamic instances of recent ‘long duration’ musical thought in and through which to engage the developing conceptual frameworks of long duration and drone music.
Jon Forshee is a composer of colorful, rhythmically energetic Electroacoustic Music which combines live performance with electronics, often engaging new media resources. Many of his works are multi-disciplinary, and draw upon a plurality of musical, technological, and theoretic influences to create music interlaced with many themes and connections. Musical cultures from around the world, particularly from West Africa and China, also deeply inform Jon’s creative practice, both philosophically and on a performance level. Through research into these practices, Jon continues to create a vibrant, multi-faceted body of work which is presented on the stage throughout the United States and abroad. Jon also writes articles on many musical and aesthetic topics which have been published in various music journals, and he is dedicated to collaboration and teaching as two crucial dimensions of his work now and going forward. Dr. Forshee currently serves as Teaching Professor of Music Technology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, where he teaches Composition, Computer Music, Audio Engineering and Music Theory, and where he also coaches the UCCS Brass Ensemble and acts as Conductor and Director of the UCCS Orchestra. At UCCS Jon also co-founded ELECTROWAVE, the Rocky Mountain Electroacoustic Music Festival, now in its second year, as a collaboration between UCCS and the broader Electroacoustic Music communities of Colorado. In Spring 2025, Jon’s opera BLOOD|HUNGER\CHILD will be presented by a collaboration between the Denver-based Nebula Ensemble and UCCS.