Browsing by Author "Dahan, Kevin"

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    Construire l’impermanence – temps et immutabilité chez Jean-Claude Risset
    (2018-11) Dahan, Kevin
    In many of Jean-Claude Risset's works – for example in Invisible (1996) and Otro (2011) – there is, beyond the stated esthetical goal or the compositional and technical processes, an erudite reflection on the passage of time, transformation and otherness. Always inscribed in the heart of the mathematical-physical-perception triangle, and drawing on a deep erudition, his works provoke, by playing with the limits of our senses, a questioning on the deep nature of sound and musical construction. In particular, the notion of impermanence - which has come in many of our conversations - appears essential, especially to illuminate the continuum that exists between the instrumental and synthetic writings. We will seek to characterize these principles and then question how Jean-Claude Risset staged the musical time, from the rigorous construction of the timbre by the composer to the unpredictable subjectivity of the listener’s perception.
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    Editorial: Time in Electroacoustic Music
    (Cambridge University Press, 2020-08-01) Mountain, Rosemary; Dahan, Kevin
    This issue addresses the multifaceted topic of time in electroacoustic music. The subject is of course a vast one, as all music is by nature temporal. In Western classical traditions, the various manifestations of time ended up being notated through a plethora of conventions: tempo markings, note durations, bar lines, timbre (expressed through a combination of instrumentation, dynamics, articulation and ornamentation but usually with the finer details supplied by the performer). As a result, the few discussions of temporal properties of music beyond the pitch-centred harmonic/melodic texts were usually subsumed into discussions of metre, rhythm and, sometimes, large-scale formal design.
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    An electroacoustic society: schismogenetical trends in Trevor Wishart's Globalalia
    (De Montfort University, 2014-08) Dahan, Kevin
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    Emergence des dimensions temporelles dans la musique électroacoustique
    (2016) Dahan, Kevin
    La musique électroacoustique, pour celui qui l’analyse ou qui la compose, présente, de par la difficulté de la réduire – à une notation, à une structure, à un style, … – un objet d’étude polymorphe. Au travers d’exemples, nous verrons comment les différentes temporalités émergent – au moment du faire et de l’ouïr – de structures électroacoustiques composées, par leur mise en rapport et leur articulation ; nous esquisserons alors une grille de lecture basée sur l’idée d’émergence des dimensions temporelles.
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    Emergent Temporal Qualities in Musical Improvisation
    (2017-02) Dahan, Kevin
    Musical improvisation is a phenomenon that is found in most cultures and most musical idioms. Consequently, many methods have been used to analyze it, many focusing on structural elements (Arom, 1985; 2004), several on cultural aspects (Sawyer, 2000), and some comparative, due to the similarity of the musical processes found in diverse cultures and styles (Nettl, 1974). Performers interact in various ways to create the improvised musical discourse, communicating with each other, juxtaposing or coordinating musical phrases, for example through processes such as repetition, harmonic complementation, or rhythmical variations. Therefore, inherently, due to musical improvisation being created "in the moment", the musical result strongly depends on the underlying mechanisms and concepts of time of the performers. This involves interactions at different levels - between the performers and within each performer - this multiplicity of (quasi-)simultaneous complex processes makes music improvisation study and analysis a challenge. We argue that a key for a better understanding of improvisation lies precisely in describing and understanding the specificities of the multiple 'times' that can be witnessed during improvisations. We therefore propose the concept of 'Emergent Temporal Qualities', postulating that a musical structure is actualised through emergent mechanisms in various temporal forms, from the neural aspects (Large et al., 2015) to the musical actualisation in the improvisatory (group) context. This concept provides a more flexible and dynamic tool than the usual derivative structural approach found in classic musicological studies, substituting emergence to derivation, and registering interaction, perception and performance (i.e. the physicality of it) as essential components of the analysis of an improvisation. We then demonstrate its use in the free-jazz and live electronics contexts. We then outline some potential developments, notably in semi-automated music analysis and in the analysis of other musical genres.
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    Glissements et circularités chez Denis Smalley
    (2017-05) Dahan, Kevin
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    Gravitational Landscape (with tinnitus)
    (2016-04-27) Dahan, Kevin
    Gravitational Landscape is an experiment made of algorithmic procedures drawn from mathematics and/or physical laws (what happens when you compose without musical references?) using mainly unstable sound synthesis techniques (what happens when you compose without ears?). The aim of this piece is to explore rough textures, sounds and resonances (somes reminiscent of certain computer music compositions...) - and to bring in even more 'raw' chaos! Due to the uncertain nature - for music - of the techniques involved, it has been a constant struggle to find the correct parameters to prevent most of Thom's catastrophic singularities (hopefully avoiding a week-long tinnitus for listeners).
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    Musings on computer music perennity
    (International Computer Music Association, 2020-10-20) Dahan, Kevin
    It should come as no surprise that, at more than sixty years of age, the computer music field starts to ponder its legacy: what started almost as a ‘challenge’ is now a well-established academic practice which has had a profound impact over the whole music and entertainment industries. More often than not, breakthroughs in our field were initially established through pursuing musical or aesthetical, rather than purely technical, goals: this is especially the case in ‘early’ computer music. Clearly, it is now time to reflect on the numerous techniques (many of which make the foundations of current music software) that have been initiated over the years. Perhaps one of the best ways of examining these is through in-depth multimodal analyses of computer music works: this approach would constitute an initial effort towards a critical evaluation of computer music history.
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    (Re)discovering Sounds of CCRMA - Towards Computer Music Preservation
    (International Computer Music Association, 2018-08) Dahan, Kevin
    Sixty years after the initial experiments on digital sound synthesis, we are now facing several problems regarding the preservation of computer music artefacts. The usual practice has been to safeguard the end product - the actual sound output - at the expense of the sources that have been used in the production process; but by doing so, we risk losing the traces of important practices and works. In that respect, CCRMA provides an interesting case study: as one of the first and leading center for computer music research over four decades, countless musical productions (compositions, musical examples, teaching material) have been produced there. The archives and the different types of documents found will be described; the problems due to the polymorphic nature of these archives will be discussed. A methodology for the preservation of significant musical artefacts will be presented and the key questions raised will be identified and discussed. While this proposed methodology and practice will be initially used on documents of CCRMA, it is designed to be sufficiently flexible to be functional on other similar archives.
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    Reconstructing Computer Music Works Ethos and Praxis
    (International Computer Music Association, 2018-08) Dahan, Kevin
    Computer Music is now 60 years old. During the last six decades, many systems – hardware and software – have been developed, used and abused to create musical works. Most of the older hardware is now decommissioned or in an unusable state; some of the programming languages that have been used are unavailable or not available for current operating systems. As for software, the vast majority of computer music works are now available solely through digital audio files; sometimes these are the nth generation copy of an initial analogic tape – which causes problems for the preservation of these works. With access to part of the original source code or given sufficient information of a given hardware system, it is possible to reconstruct a musical work using software and tools. On top of the technical aspects, it raises many questions, since accessing the source code make it possible to interpret an otherwise fixed musical work, thus opening up the debate on the status of the computer music work. The panel goal is to discuss the techniques that can or may be used to reconstruct computer music works as well as the (technical, analytical, esthetical, historical, ontological…) implications of these approaches.
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    Reconstruction as preservation strategy
    (Bayreuth Universität, 2018-12) Dahan, Kevin
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    Splices and Alloys: Emergent Qualities in Electroacoustic Music
    (SOCIEDADE PORTUGUESA DE INVESTIGAÇÃO EM MÚSICA, 2016-11) Dahan, Kevin
    There is a tendency in electroacoustic music analysis to focus on the description of sound morphologies – from Pierre Schaeffer’s typomorphology to Denis Smalley’s spectromorphology – frequently leaving aside issues related to the juxtaposition, coordination and cohabitation of sonic elements, an essential part of electroacoustic composition. Interestingly, the notion of compound sound objects has been around since the birth of musique concrète and Elektronische Musik, albeit in different forms (Manning, 1985); aesthetical and technical differences found in today’s electroacoustic music works can be traced back to these two pioneering approaches and exemplify a number of subtly different processes and strategies (Roads, 2015). I will introduce the concepts of splice – which can be summarised as a process whereby multiple sound morphologies interact with each other over time to create an elaborate structure whose main features are distinctively extracted from the original sounds – and that of alloy – explaining how several sound morphologies interact at different levels (notably non sonic) to create hybrid sound structures that bear little perceptual resemblance to their parents. Through analyses of recent electroacoustic works, I will show how these concepts can be used to describe and characterise features of sonic elements usually classified as emergent – temporal qualities, morphological characteristics and perceptual forms. These elements will tentatively help in establishing a dynamic and functional – rather than descriptive – analytical discourse for electroacoustic music.
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    A temporal framework for electroacoustic music exploration
    (Cambridge University Press, 2020-08-06) Dahan, Kevin
    Many aural analytical methods have been produced for electroacoustic music that focus on the identification of salient morphological features of the sounds. Doing so, they usually overlook the importance of time - a central aspect of music - sometimes by considering it as a simple compositional parameter. Instead, this article proposes a novel theoretical framework for electroacoustic music understanding by putting time and its cognitive representations during perception at the forefront. Two concepts are introduced to propose this alternative approach to electroacoustic music description: temporal directionality, which focuses on the sounds themselves, and temporal distancing, which focuses on the relations between sounds. Throughout the text, several musical examples are given to briefly exemplify how such concepts can be used in an explanatory context. Finally, polychrony is introduced, which aims to describe how electroacoustic composers play with the various cases of temporal directionality and distancing, and, in the process, actually weave time itself.
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    Towards Effective Preservation of Electroacoustic Music
    (TU Dresden, 2020-10) Dahan, Kevin
    Electroacoustic music is inherently transdisciplinary. Crafted in varied environments, in many different styles, using a plethora of techniques, electroacoustic music works present a challenge for the composer, listener and music analyst alike. In part, this is due to the evolution of our technological environment over the past 70 years: analogue has been supplanted by digital, systems have come and gone, medias have deteriorated and increasing ease of communication meant increased awareness and sharing of cultural, technological and musical practices. The abundance of approaches made possible by those factors, and the global availability of relatively cheap digital systems, led to the multiplication of electroacoustic composition workshops away from recognised creation centres, and, consequently, to the dispersion of many electroacoustic compositions. Previous initiatives have demonstrated the difficulty in locating and safekeeping important and pioneering electroacoustic works (IDEAMA 1996) and, since then, the complexities of this task have only grown exponentially. Current initiatives are mostly bound by institutional limitations and greatly depend on the goodwill and time of individuals. In such a context, how to enact effective preservation of electroacoustic music? Several strategies have already been explored, from simple media preservation (which consists of ensuring the storage of the finished composition through media copies), all the way up to reconstruction (which requires access to a sufficient number of sources as well as specialist knowledge). It is clear that, being artefacts of technologies, being able to preserve the plasticity of electroacoustic music is a significant advantage, as it ensures long-term adaptation (and enjoyment) to ever-evolving diffusion norms, protocols and systems. Significant challenges lie ahead to establish the to ensure effective preservation of electroacoustic music. Notably, we have to: a) establish an extensive catalogue of candidate works for preservation; b) classify compositions depending on the information and data available; c) determine the best preservation model; d) actually preserve the composition. We argue that, even though all these steps require a breadth of varied specialist knowledge, musicological and analytical considerations must drive the whole process, so as not to lose the cultural perspective.
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    Unchartable territories? A study involving Stria, brainwaves and some other things...
    (Université de Bordeaux, 2014-09-25) Dahan, Kevin