Why did you write the conductor program article?
I first wrote Tapper because I wanted to use it; I
modified it to make it easier for my friends to use (especially Christopher
Strangio and the Dalbys), and I rewrote it for Windows so that it could run on a
more modern machine (so that my friend Mervin Lane could use it). At that
point, since I'd done most of the work necessary for it to run on MacOSX, I
wrote a version for that, too, with the idea of making both versions available
as freeware. Since most people don't know quite
what the conductor program is or why anybody might want to use it, I decided to
accompany the release of the freeware with an article describing it. I
didn't want people to think Tapper was representative of the full potential of
the conductor program, so I put in a history section to put it in context, to
show that it was an early and very minimal implementation.
Over the years, I've participated in hundreds of
discussions about the conductor program, and while I'm very interested in the
idea, I'd grown a little weary of going over the same ground, so I took the
article as an opportunity to make all the points about it that I and other
people had made in those discussions, with the hope that it would save me
some repetition.
Finally: I think the conductor program is a wonderful
thing, and I wanted to advertise my interest in it, to increase the likelihood
that I'd get to know other people who are working on it.
Who is the intended reader for the article?
Anybody who is interested, or who becomes interested. It's not especially
intended as a "popular" article; I expect that people who are puzzled, curious
or confused will search the web for explanations, write me, or remain puzzled
and confused.
What are you working on now?
Besides this page, you mean? ;-)
Developing a video game that teaches music sight-reading.
Didn't I see the MAM on TV?
Yes! Starting in November 2000, Classic Arts Showcase has been
broadcasting selections from the two Music Animation Machine videotapes. CAS's
satellite broadcasts can be received in all of North and South America, and
their programming is rebroadcast in many cities, typically by community and
non-profit stations; to find their station in your area, click here .
What about using synaesthetic
colors for the MAM?
Some synaesthetes associate colors with musical pitches.
For people without perfect pitch, colors are more memorable than pitches.
Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow combine synaesthesia and the Music
Animation Machine? Unfortunately, not everybody has synaesthesia, and among
those who do, there is no agreement about which colors go with which pitches.
For example, Elizabeth A. Pector, M.D. has one set of associations,
while Cassidy Curtis has another
(and Tony De Caprio yet another, but this link is temporarily broken). So, while it would be
possible to make a MAM display that was satisfying for one particular
synaesthete, another would think it was all wrong.
But more to the point: synaesthetes with color/pitch
synaesthesia already have perfect pitch, so they don't need help recognizing pitches. For the rest of us, I
believe that any given random coloring makes as much sense as another (though I
know in my heart that G is brown); therefore, I've focused on colorings which
are governed by some recognizable rule, such as in my Harmonic Coloring scheme.
How did you pick the colors used in Harmonic Coloring?
The main idea of the coloring is: apply twelve colors
from the color wheel to the twelve pitches around the circle of fifths. Once
you've decided to do that, there are four more choices:
Which color/pitch to start on. I've chosen blue as the
"home pitch," since blue suggests repose and resolution (as opposed to, say,
red, which suggests activity).
Which direction to use in mapping the pitches and the
colors. I've chosen to associate the I-to-V direction with the blue-to-red
direction (since motion toward V is more often associated with more activity).
This means that the I-to-IV direction is toward green.
Which direction to use when presenting the colors and
pitches on a circle. I've chosen to make the I-to-V direction clockwise.
Which exact colors to use. I tried to choose colors so
as to maximized the minimum perceptible difference between any two colors. With
the variability in computer monitors and TV screens, this turned out to be
nearly impossible.
These choices are all fairly arbitrary. For example, if
a piece modulates into a different key, the (local) I is no longer blue, and so
the association of blue=home, red=dominant no longer holds.
Is there some way to turn a drawing back into music?
Yes. If you're interested in exploring this, you might want to check out:
"Musical Sketchpad" in Morton Subotnik's Creating Music software.
The UPIC System.
The MetaSynth.
Iannis Xenakis's Mycenae Alpha (YouTube video).
Face as sound at 3:10 (YouTube video).
Do you sell posters of the MAM?
No, but you're welcome to. :-)
Is the MAM useful for (or
interesting to) the deaf?
I don't know -- but the question is certainly
interesting to me. I have not gotten much feedback
about the MAM from deaf people, so I don't know the answer. I've sent tapes to
Gallaudet University and to various deaf people I've known of, but I've received
only one or two responses; from those, it appears that the MAM display is no
more interesting to deaf people than it is to hearing people when they watch it
with the sound turned off, which is to say: not very. In a way, this result,
though disappointing, makes a certain amount of sense: why, after all, should it
be any different?
The fact that the MAM is not very interesting when
unaccompanied by sound suggests that it is deficient: that there are aspects of
musical sound which are not well represented in the MAM display. This is
something I'm working on: to figure out what aspects of our perception of sound
are not present in the MAM, and try to invent ways of showing them.
On a related subject: Will Pitkin (link to follow) is
working on a project the goal of which is to help deaf infants exercise the
auditory cortex of their brain by presenting them with visualizations of the
sounds around them during their "babbling" period. For this to be maximally
useful, the visualizations will have to be comprehensible to the eye in much the
same way that sound is comprehensible to the ear -- which is to say: he's going
to have to solve many of the same problems that I have to.
How does the MAM relate to
numerology, metaphysics, parapsychology, aliens, etc.?
I don't know. These people might have some ideas, though:
Spectrum Muse: the explosive new knowledge and technology
of color, music, numbers and waves with applications in all areas of
metaphysics, physics, mathematics, chemistry, psychology, biology, and much
more
Charles Lucy (do a web search for "Lucy Tuning")