Escritura Sismográfica: Interação entre compositor e suporte digital

Abstract

Taking a look at the music history we can notice a deep relation between the sound representations used by composers and the way they elaborate their musical thought. During the 20th century this relation became very explicit because of: a) the composers interest in sound composition; b) the attempts to recover the improvisation and chance in music; c) the new tecnologies for sound analysis and synthesis, specially after 1970 when these activities became centralized in one tool for general use: the computer. That will allow the composer to elaborate both the internals of sound and large complex compositions with the same kind of abstractions.This article offers a discussion on the latter topic: the relation between music composition and the sound representations offered by the computer. After a short introduction, we start a discussion on the influence of certain kinds of software for audio manipulation in the composer's aesthetic choices. Afterwards we talk about the limitations imposed by digital environment to the compositional process, and then we conclude with the kinds of interaction that can happen between the composer and his tools. Finally we make some appointments to future researches.