Music Theory

Where does instrumentality end and the laptop begin? Glitch music—the sound of a failing hard drive, a scratched CD, a digital artifact—flips traditional performance conventions on their heads by stripping away physical gesture, replacing it with raw machine data. Leader Alva Noto calls himself a non-musician, favouring visual composition and frequencies beyond human hearing. His jump from abstract laptop solos to collaborating with the Ensemble Modern and Ryuichi Sakamoto could look like a turn

What happens when singers weave everyday speech patterns into their performance? This analysis examines four paralinguistic qualifiers — breathy voice, raucous voice, falsetto, and cry breaks — as heard in Emmylou Harris’s second verse of “Where Will I Be.” Using spectrogram visualization, we see how each alters vocal timbre to convey emotion. The result is a window into the expressive toolkit of the popular singing voice.

How can a machine compose music that feels neither too simple nor too chaotic? This deep dive into automatic composition reveals the intelligent algorithms behind it — from cellular automata and L-systems to genetic search and real-time listener feedback. Discover how unsupervised systems spark surprising output, supervised methods enforce style constraints, and interactive models adapt to your taste.

For decades, distance has been one of the toughest challenges in making music together — until now. IMPERMANENCE transforms your networked rehearsal by trading zero-latency fantasies for smart tools: adaptive metronomes that bend to your tempo, 3D audio you can hear without heavy gear, and deep learning that maps out exactly where every player is in the virtual room. Two controlled studies — on piano duets playing Bartók and violin pairs under binaural audio — reveal what actually works.

In mixed electroacoustic music, instruments and electronics converge, but how do the listener's ears weave disparate sounds into coherent streams? This research disentangles the practical from the sonic, applying auditory scene analysis to show how layers, planes, and textures interact, and how visual performance becomes part of the texture itself.

How is technology rewriting the rules of music performance, publishing, and education? A new volume from the MUSICNETWORK association delivers fourteen expert chapters on everything from MPEG-SMR notation standards and optical music recognition to DRM and online distribution models. Understand the tech driving modern music.

Imagine controlling a symphony of sound with nothing but your hands, no physical instrument required. Ubiquitous music blurs the lines between performance and technology — from Thomas Edison's phonograph to modern FM synthesizers triggered by webcam gestures. Explore how gesture-driven Digital Signal Processing and Pure Data patches create virtual instruments, how cyberspace allows sound to travel faster than the speed of sound, and how networked ensembles can now interact purely by transmitting

The way audiences experience commercial music is entering a new phase. Smartphones now have more power than early desktop computers, making it possible for listeners to actively shape the music they hear. While vinyl allowed scratching and tempo manipulation, today's album apps go further, letting users explore alternate takes, swap instruments, and mix stems — all within the artist's original vision. This article unpacks the emerging album app format through the work of Daisy and The Dark.

What happens when older Australians share musical moments with children? This phenomenological study follows Irene, Margaret, and Bruce—three seniors who play piano, teach violin, or jam in a rock band with younger partners. They describe music not only as a bridge across generations but as a source of social connection, renewed purpose, and deep reciprocity. Explore the lived experiences that make intergenerational music making beneficial for all involved, and what music educators can learn fro

Can musicians truly play together over the Internet? The explosive growth of the network has made music streaming common, but live performance demands far more—tolerating delays measured in hundredths of a second. From adaptive delivery strategies to codecs and OS improvements, this article dissects the obstacles and breakthroughs that promise to make Internet music a reality.