December 7, 2005
Singing Machines and Laptop Orchestras:
New Expressive Digital Musical Instruments
Perry Cook
Associate Prof. Computer Sciences, (jointly with Music),
Princeton University
Minutes of the 12th Meeting of the 64th Year
Following the monthly fellowship period President William Haines called the 12th meeting of the 64th year to order at 10:15 AM. John Marks led the approximately 90 attendees in the well-pitched customary singing of the fourth stanza of My Country, 'Tis of Thee.”
Bruno Walmsley read his minutes of the November 30 meeting, when the speaker was Dr. Nancy Snyderman, a physician and former medical reporter on ABC television, who is now a Vice President and media expert at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Co. The title of her address was "Medicine and the Media," in which she uninhibitedly expressed her opinions on a wide range of timely topics.
At the invitation of President Haines, Joan Fleming introduced her guest, Julianna McIntyre, and John Frederick introduced his wife Pamela Jean, who was attending as a visitor.
Dr. Haines then announced the recent deaths of two Old Guard members, Robert G. Mills on December 5 and George J. Willis, Jr. on December 6. A moment of silence was observed in their memory.
George Hansen then introduced the speaker, Dr. Perry R. Cook, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Music at Princeton University. Prof. Cook holds bachelor degrees in Music and Electrical Engineering, and a Masters degree and Ph. D. from Stanford, where he went on to serve as Technical Director of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. As the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship in 2003, he began work on his 1200-page book on technology and the human voice. He has written many other books and articles.
Prof. Cook began by announcing his expanded topic, which for your minutes-taker turned out to be a helpful outline of his presentation: "Physical Acoustic Models, Musical Coffee Mugs, Singing Machines, and Laptop Orchestras - New Computer Mediated Musical Instruments." It was also an alert that we were in for a presentation the likes of which no Old Guard group in all probability had ever been exposed to before.
"I take much of my motivation," said Dr. Cook, "from music history, and the history of music is a technological history." Defining technology as "Any intentionally fashioned tool or technique," he noted that musical inventors have always been searching for ways to make better instruments and cited the development of the pianoforte as an example. It enabled the soft-voiced piano to play more loudly (forte) and hence to be used with larger orchestras and to be heard by larger audiences.
But with the volume producing capabilities of modem computers he feels his students need to be taught to listen for the subtleties of musical sounds. One of his historical motivators was Edgar Varess, who in 1916 stressed the need for new instruments, new ways of making sounds that tease the ears. A year later there appeared the first playable electronic interactive instrument, called the Theremin, named after its inventor, Leon Termen. It was used in the Beach Boys' recording, Good Vibrations.
Prof. Cook’s approach is that of a performer and improviser, though he is also a composer who likes to work with performers. He looks at the instruments we have and tries to figure out how to flatten the learning curve for students and how to make more expressive new sounds. Thus he examines the physics of sound production. How does a trumpet, or a violin, or the human voice make sound? How does the way a performer interacts with the instrument make the difference "between a Yoyo Ma and your niece"?
His experience with Dexter Morril in building a trumpet for Winton Marsallis, with-sensors on it to capture the subtleties of Winton's lip and body movements, convinced him that the performer has everything to do with the resulting sound. "Its physics meets physiology". With their highly sophisticated computer programming Dr. Cook and his colleagues have been able to simulate various instruments and to model the way strings, bows, wind instruments, rigid structures, bars, glass, the voice, and many other things work. They can develop software that moves a violin bow the way a player does, for example. There are still things they haven’t been able to model such as the way resin works, but they are making progress in their efforts to calibrate and compute the imperfections caused by friction for example. Whereas scientists and engineers study friction to get rid of it, Dr. Cook wants to understand it, to discover what's "cool" about it. So, too, with the breathy components of the human voice.
In the 1ate seventies to mid-eighties computers were not capab1e of performing these tasks in real time. By the late eighties there were computers with some computational power and slots for music cards, Dr. Cook started co11aborating with graphics peop1e, who are a1so interested in physics. Together they developed an award-winning animated program of a fire hose shooting hard and soft bal1s at a piano with the resulting sound effects. It was the first piece ever done where the physics for the animation and the sound were the same engine. We enjoyed seeing the power point.
For the past ten years Dr. Cook has been trying to persuade the movie industry to abandon their antiquated methods of creating sound effects in favor of the amazingly accurate computational simu1ations. With today's computers much of the sound models can be done in real time.
Another area of interest for Prof. Cook is looking at the music in the non-musical real world. He has developed statistical models of various percussion instruments, sleigh bells, maracas, wind chimes, socket wrenches, ice cubes in a glass, leaves under foot, app1ause, coins, and many other things and has built controls that change the parameters of the sounds in various ways. His demonstrations were fascinating, especia11y his musica1 coffee mug, which cou1d simulate even the subtle distinctions in the sounds of the different coins that seemed to be rattling in the empty mug.
Many augmented instruments have been created, such as the DigitalDoo which is an Aboriginal digjeridoo that has been sensor-augmented. Dr. Cook has also collaborated with Curtis Hahn of Rensse1aer Polytechnic Institute in building spherical speakers that engage the space much more interestingly than traditional amplifiers and enhance the performance of electronic chamber music. The idea was suggested by a colleague and fellow electronic musician Dan Trueman, Assistant Professor of Music at Princeton. Trueman developed the BOSSA, an acrostic for Bowed Sensor Speaker Array.
Dr. Cook told us more about his massive research on technology and the human voice. He showed us some of the voice controllers he has developed and used in performances, including the Cowe, which stands for "Controller - one with everything," and in 2004 the Vomid, which stands for Voice Oriented Melodica Interface Device. There were slides of earlier controllers, like his own Hirn, and of other real world sonic controllers. Another slide was of the Squeeze Vox, a computerized accordion. Software has been written in a variety of languages for all of these instruments, but no software has been developed yet for computation of symphonic orchestras.
These technological advances are having a tremendous impact on many fields, including instrumental music, singing, acting, and preaching. Dr. Cook told us about the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), consisting of 15 musicians with 15 different computer instruments. He then played part of a linked synthesized electronic concert involving musicians in Princeton and at McGill University in Montreal playing simultaneously and rhythmically over the Internet.
"Why do I do this?" he asked at the conclusion of his presentation. "Because it's fun! The students love it. It enhances and augments their understanding of sound and music, enables them to experience music, increases their knowledge of music history, and it develops their listening skills." Moreover, it provides a palette of real-time sonic optics. Prof. Cook is trying to increase the reliability and life of new instruments and in the process increase public awareness, acceptance, and hopefully enjoyment of electronic music. "There's still much to be done," he said.
Dr. Cook ended his formal presentation at 11:22 a. m., after which he had time to address just three questions from the audience. For this reporter the talk was an eye-opening and mind-boggling exploration of a wild, weird, and wonderful new world.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:30 AM.
Respectfully submitted,
Richard S. Armstrong
Bruno Walmsley read his minutes of the November 30 meeting, when the speaker was Dr. Nancy Snyderman, a physician and former medical reporter on ABC television, who is now a Vice President and media expert at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Co. The title of her address was "Medicine and the Media," in which she uninhibitedly expressed her opinions on a wide range of timely topics.
At the invitation of President Haines, Joan Fleming introduced her guest, Julianna McIntyre, and John Frederick introduced his wife Pamela Jean, who was attending as a visitor.
Dr. Haines then announced the recent deaths of two Old Guard members, Robert G. Mills on December 5 and George J. Willis, Jr. on December 6. A moment of silence was observed in their memory.
George Hansen then introduced the speaker, Dr. Perry R. Cook, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Music at Princeton University. Prof. Cook holds bachelor degrees in Music and Electrical Engineering, and a Masters degree and Ph. D. from Stanford, where he went on to serve as Technical Director of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. As the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship in 2003, he began work on his 1200-page book on technology and the human voice. He has written many other books and articles.
Prof. Cook began by announcing his expanded topic, which for your minutes-taker turned out to be a helpful outline of his presentation: "Physical Acoustic Models, Musical Coffee Mugs, Singing Machines, and Laptop Orchestras - New Computer Mediated Musical Instruments." It was also an alert that we were in for a presentation the likes of which no Old Guard group in all probability had ever been exposed to before.
"I take much of my motivation," said Dr. Cook, "from music history, and the history of music is a technological history." Defining technology as "Any intentionally fashioned tool or technique," he noted that musical inventors have always been searching for ways to make better instruments and cited the development of the pianoforte as an example. It enabled the soft-voiced piano to play more loudly (forte) and hence to be used with larger orchestras and to be heard by larger audiences.
But with the volume producing capabilities of modem computers he feels his students need to be taught to listen for the subtleties of musical sounds. One of his historical motivators was Edgar Varess, who in 1916 stressed the need for new instruments, new ways of making sounds that tease the ears. A year later there appeared the first playable electronic interactive instrument, called the Theremin, named after its inventor, Leon Termen. It was used in the Beach Boys' recording, Good Vibrations.
Prof. Cook’s approach is that of a performer and improviser, though he is also a composer who likes to work with performers. He looks at the instruments we have and tries to figure out how to flatten the learning curve for students and how to make more expressive new sounds. Thus he examines the physics of sound production. How does a trumpet, or a violin, or the human voice make sound? How does the way a performer interacts with the instrument make the difference "between a Yoyo Ma and your niece"?
His experience with Dexter Morril in building a trumpet for Winton Marsallis, with-sensors on it to capture the subtleties of Winton's lip and body movements, convinced him that the performer has everything to do with the resulting sound. "Its physics meets physiology". With their highly sophisticated computer programming Dr. Cook and his colleagues have been able to simulate various instruments and to model the way strings, bows, wind instruments, rigid structures, bars, glass, the voice, and many other things work. They can develop software that moves a violin bow the way a player does, for example. There are still things they haven’t been able to model such as the way resin works, but they are making progress in their efforts to calibrate and compute the imperfections caused by friction for example. Whereas scientists and engineers study friction to get rid of it, Dr. Cook wants to understand it, to discover what's "cool" about it. So, too, with the breathy components of the human voice.
In the 1ate seventies to mid-eighties computers were not capab1e of performing these tasks in real time. By the late eighties there were computers with some computational power and slots for music cards, Dr. Cook started co11aborating with graphics peop1e, who are a1so interested in physics. Together they developed an award-winning animated program of a fire hose shooting hard and soft bal1s at a piano with the resulting sound effects. It was the first piece ever done where the physics for the animation and the sound were the same engine. We enjoyed seeing the power point.
For the past ten years Dr. Cook has been trying to persuade the movie industry to abandon their antiquated methods of creating sound effects in favor of the amazingly accurate computational simu1ations. With today's computers much of the sound models can be done in real time.
Another area of interest for Prof. Cook is looking at the music in the non-musical real world. He has developed statistical models of various percussion instruments, sleigh bells, maracas, wind chimes, socket wrenches, ice cubes in a glass, leaves under foot, app1ause, coins, and many other things and has built controls that change the parameters of the sounds in various ways. His demonstrations were fascinating, especia11y his musica1 coffee mug, which cou1d simulate even the subtle distinctions in the sounds of the different coins that seemed to be rattling in the empty mug.
Many augmented instruments have been created, such as the DigitalDoo which is an Aboriginal digjeridoo that has been sensor-augmented. Dr. Cook has also collaborated with Curtis Hahn of Rensse1aer Polytechnic Institute in building spherical speakers that engage the space much more interestingly than traditional amplifiers and enhance the performance of electronic chamber music. The idea was suggested by a colleague and fellow electronic musician Dan Trueman, Assistant Professor of Music at Princeton. Trueman developed the BOSSA, an acrostic for Bowed Sensor Speaker Array.
Dr. Cook told us more about his massive research on technology and the human voice. He showed us some of the voice controllers he has developed and used in performances, including the Cowe, which stands for "Controller - one with everything," and in 2004 the Vomid, which stands for Voice Oriented Melodica Interface Device. There were slides of earlier controllers, like his own Hirn, and of other real world sonic controllers. Another slide was of the Squeeze Vox, a computerized accordion. Software has been written in a variety of languages for all of these instruments, but no software has been developed yet for computation of symphonic orchestras.
These technological advances are having a tremendous impact on many fields, including instrumental music, singing, acting, and preaching. Dr. Cook told us about the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), consisting of 15 musicians with 15 different computer instruments. He then played part of a linked synthesized electronic concert involving musicians in Princeton and at McGill University in Montreal playing simultaneously and rhythmically over the Internet.
"Why do I do this?" he asked at the conclusion of his presentation. "Because it's fun! The students love it. It enhances and augments their understanding of sound and music, enables them to experience music, increases their knowledge of music history, and it develops their listening skills." Moreover, it provides a palette of real-time sonic optics. Prof. Cook is trying to increase the reliability and life of new instruments and in the process increase public awareness, acceptance, and hopefully enjoyment of electronic music. "There's still much to be done," he said.
Dr. Cook ended his formal presentation at 11:22 a. m., after which he had time to address just three questions from the audience. For this reporter the talk was an eye-opening and mind-boggling exploration of a wild, weird, and wonderful new world.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:30 AM.
Respectfully submitted,
Richard S. Armstrong