CNMAT Rhythm Engine Project

   [1]CRE Personnel

What is the CNMAT Rhythm Engine Project?

   The CNMAT Rhythm Engine (CRE) software provides a flexible and powerful
   way for representing, constructing, and performing rhythm-oriented
   music. It represents rhythmic data using quantized subdivision,
   continuous time, and/or a mixture of the two by allowing fractional
   deviations from quantization. It allows readily for the combination of
   different musical phrases or systems, in series or in parallel, to
   yield larger musical structures. Such operations may be performed in an
   editing context (ahead of performance time) or in an improvising
   context (during performance time). The CRE software may be used to
   drive synthesizers, samplers, or other sound modules. The software
   consists of rhythmic data structures, programs that handle the data
   (e.g. editors, scheduler, players) and a graphical user interface that
   represents these programs and data visually.

    Expressive timing

   One crucial aspect that distinguishes this software from currently
   commercially available drum machines is the subtle and fine-grained
   control of rhythmic timing that the software offers. Timing, or
   rhythmic placement, is just as much an expressive parameter as, say,
   tone, pitch, or loudness; therefore we treat it on equal footing with
   these other parameters. We control a note's fine rhythmic placement in
   the same way that we control its loudness or duration. For example, we
   can create different kinds of apparent accents by playing notes
   slightly late (behind the beat) or early (ahead of the beat).

   All the various musical parameters combine dynamically and subtly in
   human performance. Small deviations from strict metricity combine with
   manipulation of tone and loudness to embody what some people call a
   musician's "feel." The importance of expressive timing in
   rhythm-oriented music is one of the driving concepts behind this
   project.

    Composition and combination techniques

   Another principal distinguishing trait of this software is its
   facilitation of non-standard composition techniques. These include
   making large structures by putting together small "cells," layering
   different-length rhythmic loops, setting up hierarchies and
   heterarchies, creating arbitrarily complex composite beat schemes, and
   most importantly, allowing for improvisatory invention and control of
   such structures.

    Applications

   Here are some possible applications of CRE:
     * Anything that any standard drum machine does
     * Automated percussion tracks with "human feel"
     * A program that takes quantized rhythms as input and outputs the
       same rhythms with "human feel"
     * Musical pieces of fixed duration whose component parts are variable
       (e.g. the 30-second commercial)
     * Cycling multiple phrases or rhythmic cells with
       irrationally-related durations
     * Cycling multiple phrases, starting and stopping any given cycle at
       will, in real time
     * Making a program that improvises by "driving around in
       rhythm-space" based on real-time input or by itself (i.e. machine
       listening and analysis of rhythmic information, and response or
       invention according to some combination of generative processes)
     * Let the user start and stop each node of the MOb tree without
       altering the tree structure.

   Please send other ideas, suggestions, or comments to Vijay Iyer, since
   this list provides checkpoints for the software development.
   __________________________________________________________________

   Page maintained by Vijay Iyer
   Last modified July 15, 1996
   __________________________________________________________________

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Références

   1. http://WWW.CNMAT.Berkeley.Edu/~vijay/cdm/personnel.html
   2. http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/~vijay/
   3. http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/
   4. mailto:cdm@icsi.berkeley.edu
   5. mailto:vijay@cnmat.berkeley.edu