From: technews <technews@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Web Site Provides Primer on Electronic Music (Chron of Hi
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 14:38:09 -0600
From the issue dated December 17, 1999
Web Site Provides Primer on Electronic Music
By BIANCA P. FLOYD
When Jeffrey Stolet, a professor of music at the University of Oregon,
couldn't find an introductory textbook on electronic music for a course he
wanted to teach, he decided to create one -- not just for his own students,
but for anyone interested in the subject.
The Electronic Music Interactive (http://nmc.uoregon.edu/emi) Web site,
developed with the university's New Media Center, functions as a handbook
that contains 38 modules on topics such as the physical properties of sound
and the process of digital recording. It also features an extensive
explanation of the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI, a method
for digitally representing music that is commonly used in electronic
instruments. Students also can view 50 animations, 80 diagrams, and a
glossary of 150 related terms.
A reader can click on technical terms in the primer to get their
definitions. "Like reading, students should be able to move back and forth
between their regular texts and the primer very easily in a non-linear
fashion," says Mr. Stolet.
The primer also helps students understand age-old musical constructs, such
as basic notation, tempo and meter, and the major and minor scales.
Electronic music is more common than many may think, because it includes
modern formats for presenting music for broadcast on the radio and for
compact-disk recordings. "If we go back a hundred years, when we heard
music, it was because there was some musician standing in front of us and we
were hearing a performance," says Mr. Stolet. However, he notes that most
music today is presented through speakers -- and, consequently, in an
electronic format of some kind.
Mr. Stolet's primer also helps students understand the various tasks in
creating electronic music, which combines the roles of composer, performer,
and producer. For example, the primer explains how a composer can create a
song on a keyboard controller and then store it on a computer. The primer
further explains how the composer can use a MIDI sequencer, which enables
the user to record, edit, and play back the song, and to add the sounds of
other instruments.
New technology places additional responsibilities on musicians, says Mr.
Stolet. "Electronic composers must build the instrument. They must compose
the notes. They must arrange, balance, and coordinate all of those notes,
and they must shape those notes as performers," Mr. Stolet says. In the end,
Mr. Stolet says, he hopes that his primer will help a new generation of
electronic musicians to find their artistic voices. "I'm interested in
making stuff up, which is what a composer does. I want my students to have
that same kind of creative freedom and ability to express themselves that is
inherent in a new environment of multimedia sound design," he says.