(Re)discovering Sounds of CCRMA - Towards Computer Music Preservation

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.