Review

Reviewed Work(s): Audible Design by Trevor Wishart

Review by: T. X. Monda and Miller Puckette
Source: Computer Music Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 108-110
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3681279
Accessed: 18-07-2019 12:03 UTC

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Computer Music Journal

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puter music requires more than on direct acoustic manipulations. interpolation, and new approaches to
merely novel algorithms. The piece, The orientation of the book is prac-form. The chapter on form is particu-
which would be more accurately de- tical, while not divulging parameterlarly concerned with the concept of
scribed as a mere demonstration of a settings or software used. The morphing or continuous transfor-
sound synthesis technique, suffered matter-of-fact tone reminds one of mation.
severely from performers who were Wendy Carlos's Secrets of Synthesis Meanwhile, the form of Audible
seduced by electronics' graces and released in the mid-1980s. Design is that of a catalog of meth-
the apparent boundlessness of the Three general premises serve as ods of sound transformations. The
Free Jazz idiom. the foundation of this treatise: (1) author provides diagrams as to how
A simulation of a Jimi Hendrix- any sound can be the starting mate- these transformations might be
like sound is the only afterimage my rial for a musical composition, (2) achieved, but does not descend to
memory's self-defending filter allows this sound can be transformed in anythe level of explicit algorithms.
through. An impressively strong way, and (3) musical structure de- Along the way, Mr. Wishart defines
sound, yes, but I am left asking, pends on establishing audible rela- a new unit of acoustic information.
Why? Why spend months writing so- tionships among sounds. As Mr. This is the waveset, which means
phisticated algorithms just to repeat Wishart states, "The assumption in a pair of successive zero-crossing
a sonic image that was accomplished this book is that we are not confined points in a waveform. The waveset
20 years ago with previous means? to defining instruments to arrange is often equivalent to a wave period,
Why not enrich or elaborate upon on some preordained pitch/rhythmic but not always. This new unit has
what could already be done with so- structure, but may explore the multi- been invented in part for its computa-
called primitive analog technology, as dimensional space of sound itself, tional convenience: "This technique
we heard, for example, in Michael which may be moulded like a sculp- [using wavesets] is very fast to com-
Alcorn's piece? tural medium in any way we wish." pute but often produces strange,
This was an evening of musical This is well and good, but paradoxi- signal-dependent artifacts." Manipu-
ups and downs, but then, most con- cally, this book limits the "space of lations on wavesets are woven
certs do have their inconsistencies. It sound itself" to sampled sounds and throughout this text.
is worth remembering that today, as families of similar sounds derived Trevor Wishart introduces many
always, it takes skilled performers from a single sound object. The au- neoligisms to describe previously
to whip even the most impressive thor avoids, for all intents and pur- unnamed techniques. Readers will
sound synthesis techniques into poses, the fertile fields of waveform learn about techniques such as "spec-
good musical shape. synthesis. tral focusing," "spectral stretching,"
Methodologically, Trevor Wishart "spectral freezing," "spectral fission,"
considers composition as an open- and "spectral shaking" among many
Publications ended exploration of sound materi- others.
als. That is, a composer may not Despite the thorough treatment of
know in advance the characteristics spectrum manipulations, a surpris-
TrIevor Wishart: Audible Design
of the sounds that will be developed; ing omission in this book is the sub-
Orpheus the Pantomime, Ltd., 83 these are discovered along the way. ject of spatialization. Reverberation,
Heslington Road, York, Y01 5AX, Such a heuristic aesthetic, the au- for example, is condensed into a
UK, 1994, 139 pages, softcover, sold thor argues, is necessitated by the po-single diagram in the second appen-
by subscription only, US $75.00 tential unleashed by electroacoustic dix. Techniques of spatial projection,
postpaid. technologies. This view clashes withthe use of layers and trajectories, and
the traditional craft of note-oriented multi-loudspeaker projection sys-
Reviewed by T X. Monda music. This cultural struggle is scru- tems are not mentioned.
New York, New York, USA tinized and summarized in several While this book contains much val-
pages of reflection in the first two uable information, I am not enthusi-
Trevor Wishart's book Audible De- chapters of the book. astic about its structure. The text is
sign is subtitled 'A plain and easy in- The chapters of Audible Design partitioned into 13 chapters, with 1
troduction to practical sound com- are devoted to such subjects as pitch,appendix contained in the book and
position." According to the author, spectrum, onset (attack), continua- another 73-page pictorial appendix
sound composition differs from tradi-tion, grain streams, sequences, tex- published in a separate, spiral-bound
tional composition in its emphasis ture, time, energy, time-stretching, volume. The book is meant to be

108 Computer Music Journal

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read with a CD of sound examples
(drawn from the composer's works).
This CD has its own 18-page pro-
gram guide, also spiral bound. Thus
there are four components to this
opus. The book contains a number of
figures, but also makes numerous ref-
erences to "the appendix," which
means Appendix 2 in a separate vol-
ume. This second appendix contains
many hand-drawn diagrams of sound
transformation processes. Why put
half the diagrams in a separate book-
let? When sound examples are men-
tioned, there is yet another booklet
to refer to. Juggling three books is
part of the experience of reading
Audible Design.
The "Bibliography" contains a
grand total of eight entries, only one
of which is a book, and none of
which lists basic publication infor-
mation. For example, the entry for
GR UPPEN says "Large scale work
for 3 orchestras surrounding the audi-
ence, by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Re-
cording available."
Through this book the composer
has performed a public service in
making available the results of his ex-
tensive research in sound manipula-
tion. It could have even more to offer
in a reorganized second edition, and
might even make a fine CD-ROM if
it can integrate the diagrams and
sound examples into a more coher-
ent package.
Reviewed by Miller Puckette
San Diego, California, USA
It has long been clear that Trevor
Wishart is one of our leading compos- would be a fine companion to Audi- the CD; you get four separate ob-
ers of "pure" computer music, that
is, music made of sounds that are de-
veloped on a computer. Wishart won lates in an interesting way from a dis-
some well-deserved recognition as
the keynote speaker at the 1994 Inter- organization (chapter 2: "Pitch" and them. Unlike the book, the appendix
national Computer Music Confer-
ence (in Arhus, Denmark), which
also commissioned his tape piece,
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Tongues of Fire. The piece starts Stretching" and chapter 12: "Interpo-
with a short vocal utterance (the lation"). The two threads interrupt
"theme" as Trevor calls it; I don't and usurp each other continually. For
think it lasts more than 2 sec) and example, here is the opening of chap-
then for 20 min, proceeds to put it ter 10: "Energy:"
through every transformation imagin-
Sounds in the real world which do
able. It's an astonishing piece. And
now Mr. Wishart has written a book not simply die away to nothing re-
quire some continuous energy in-
in which he explains how to use a
put such as bowing, blowing,
computer to work with sound, ac-
scraping, or an electrical power sup-
companied with 422 sound examples
ply to maintain them. Usually, the
on a CD to illustrate the techniques,
level of the flow of energy into the
frequently making direct references
system determines the loudness of
to sounds that appear in his composi-
the output and hence allows us to
tions. In effect, Audible Design of-
fers an intimate look at how Trevor read the fluctuating causality of
the sound.
Wishart makes music. If you are in-
We may create the illusion of en-
terested in using computers to ma-
ergy flow with a continuous, se-
nipulate musical sounds, you need
this book. quential, or textural sound by sim-
ply imposing a loudness trajectory,
You need two such books, but the
other one has never been written. Au- or envelope, on it (enveloping)
(Sound example 10.1).
dible Design covers most of the craft
of sound manipulation, including And with that he sets about propos-
classical musique concrete transfor- ing all sorts of things to do with en-
mations (with sampling as a special veloping and envelope following, not
case), filtering, modulation, forgetting to work in the business
"waveset" operations, and frequency- about production effort and spec-
domain computations. The book has trum. Frequently a page of prose will
nothing to say about synthesis tech- contain half a dozen references to
niques such as additive synthesis, the CD. I've never read a book before
waveshaping (including FM), direct with my finger poised over the
waveform generation (by which I "pause" button of a CD player. It's
mean generating band-limited saw- more agreeable than I imagined, al-
tooth waves, rectangular waves, etc.), though not to be attempted in a
physical modeling, nor the huge hammock.
number of entries in the "miscellane- In order to keep the thread of the
ous" column such as Karplus-Strong, discussion focused on musical is-
iterative systems, trigonometric sues, descriptions of the techniques
sums, ... nor yet the special role that themselves are relegated to an appen-
filtering and modulation play when dix. (Unfortunately, in this first print-
used on synthetic sound. That, with ing, the appendix is separately
its own CD full of sound examples, bound, as is the listing of sounds on
ble Design. jects.) The appendix itself doesn't
Trevor Wishart's exposition modu- give rigorous technical definitions of
the various techniques; instead, it
cussion of the elements of musical gives a pictorial representation of
chapter 8: "Texture") toward a discus- is organized according to technique.
sion of approaches, toward obtaining Under "Spectrum," the titles are:
families of effects (chapter 11: "Time "spectral shifting," "spectral stretch-
Publications 109
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ing," "spectral focusing," "partial The late Jerome Markowitz was bility had been achieved." That same
tracking," "spectral freezing," "spec- the founder and president of the year the company opened a 25,000-
tral shaking," and ten others. Under Allen Organ Company for over 50 square-foot factory. From 1953 to
"Brassage" we get, for example, years. Allen organs have always been 1961 the market was relatively
"Choose segment-start from small based exclusively on electronic cir- stable, with Allen switching over
range before regular time," "Vary size cuits, as opposed to mechanical or quickly to solid-state oscillators in
segments," "Cyclical pitch-shifts of electromechanical tone generators. 1959. By then, thousands of organs
segments," and a dozen other possi- The great surprise of this book is the had been sold, including such presti-
bilities explained in pictures. pioneering role played by Allen Or- gious installations as Avery Fisher
It is unfortunate that Mr. Wishart gan in developing and marketing the Hall in New York City.
edited his own book (presumably be- first musical instruments based on Following the winds of cultural
cause nobody else offered to do so). digital wavetable synthesis, years be- change, Allen branched into the por-
Hence, the deplorable use of "it's" fore such companies as New England table keyboard market in the mid-
for "its" and even "who's" for Digital Corporation, Fairlight, Sys- 1960s with its Rocky Mountain In-
"whose;" the acronym "i.e." appears tems Concepts, and Yamaha. I'll re- struments (RMI) division. The RMI
without the trailing comma, "Harmo- turn to that story momentarily. keyboards found favor with such
nizer" appears without the trade- Unlike most of the histories in Vin- stars such as The Beach Boys, The
mark sign, and so on. To save paper tage Synthesizers, which terminate Doors, and maestro Frank Zappa.
Wishart uses a tiny font, but the para- in bankruptcy proceedings, this book By far the most important develop-
graphs are separated by empty lines. recounts a remarkable story of main- ment started in 1968, when Allen be-
A professional publisher would know taining a successful business over a gan a collaboration with the North
how to squeeze much more text on a long period. One ingredient of Mr. American Rockwell Corporation to
page and at the same time make it Markowitz's success is obvious on develop the world's first digital wave-
more readable. So should you wait every page: the author's passion for table instruments. This story, which
for a second edition to appear? My ad- the business of building electronic or- begins on page 71, is continued in
vice is no. Computer music texts, no gans. He needed passion to confront detail for the next 95 pages. The ac-
matter how good they are, seldom the harsh realities of the business count is complicated, not by techni-
get one. world. As the author states: "Picture cal details, but by explanations of a
an industry with the most savage, high-stakes partnership that is
competitive ambiance and a com- marred by misunderstandings and
Jerome Markowitz: Triumphs pany forced into continuous litiga- disagreements. Mr. Markowitz takes
and Trials of an Organ Builder tion in attempts to protect its turf. pains to expose his side of the story
Dear reader, enter the arcane world as honestly as he can, and the impres-
Allen Organ Company, 150 Locust of organs." sion given is one of resounding truth.
Street, Macungie, Pennsylvania Jerome Markowitz built his first One of the lessons we learn from
18062, USA, 1989, 204 pages, 39-note polyphonic electronic organ, this hair-raising account is the impor-
hardcover, illustrated based on vacuum tube oscillators, in tance of personal relationships in
1937. The main technical problem business. When these relationships
Reviewed by L. S. DePaul was creating oscillators with stable do not work, the business partner-
Chicago, Illinois, USA pitch, and it is for resolving this chal- ship has no foundation, and can eas-
lenge that Mr. Markowitz received ily degenerate into a drawn out legal
Every once in a while a book is writ- his first patent in 1938. He was to ob- war in which neither side wins-
ten that casts light on the business tain 25 more patents during his pro- which is exactly what happened.
of music instruments, revealing the ductive career. Despite the suffering it took, Je-
real difficulties and competitive pres- After military service in World rome Markowitz is correct to claim
sures faced in this industry. Vintage War II, Jerome Markowitz plunged se- his historical position as the pro-
Synthesizers, edited by Mark Vail riously into the electronic organ busi- ducer of the world's first digital wave-
and reviewed in Computer Music ness. He developed a rotating loud- table instrument, the Allen Com-
Journal Volume 18, Number 1, is one speaker called the Gyrophonic puter Organ. This carefully guarded
such text. Tihumphs and Trials of an Projector in 1949. Sales were steady, secret was unveiled before the press
Organ Builder is another, told from a and by 1953 he could state, "I was on 20 May 1971 in New York City.
quite different perspective. finally beginning to feel that true via- Mr. Markowitz credits George Wat-

110 Computer Music Journal

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