2. GENERAL OBJECTIVES

A. Personnal studies and work

Here my aim is to learn and discover the instruments and the now-days technology, from the basic computer to the different machines and software to make music.

This is a personnal goal. As it is said in the introduction, I never used computers before. I understood that it could be an obstacle for my composer’s carrier. Obviously it was the right time to learn the new technologies: electronic instruments, software, basic computers use. After, it could have been a too big effort to do it, or I could have no time anymore. It was essential to me to do it now. And why did I want to do that exactly? For two reasons:

-This devices offer new possibilities in composing and new sounds to the musical environment.

The synthetic sounds are for the composer a new source of instruments. You can find a multitude of sounds in the synthesisers, expanders or sound modules.

The sound processing is very interesting too: using any simple sound, you can transform it as you wish, with an infinity of possibilities, and create new instruments.

By programming, you can generate your own sounds, also with an infinity of possibilities.

With the sampling you can record sounds (voices, instruments, noises orchestras, animals...) use them and modify them in a composition.

Algorithmic compositions allow the composer to write phrases or cycles of phrases that musicians could never play.

All this means make that the composer that use them will not compose or think the music in the same way.

-Today, a composer who wants to get some work has to be able to compose, play and realize himself the music.

Thirty years ago the composer’s work was to write the score, then to give it to a copist that was copying the individual parts, to conduct (or not) the orchestra and to help during the rehearsal. Today, if a composer works only like that, he will have a lot of problems to make a living. The apparition of all the machines changed the musical world’s landscape. If we think about music for theater, movies, adverts, radio, television,we realize that many of them are made by one person.

The producers often look for the cheapest way to get a music. They dont want to pay a composer, sometimes an arranger, 20 musicians during 2 or 3 days, the same for the studio and the sound engineer. Today they have the solution: The composer can do all that and even give a CD at the end. So it is very easy to understand that a composer "as before" will starve, because to make a living he has to sell his music to these producers. For sure a composer can only write music for the stage, for concerts, but it will be difficult to survive. It is almost impossible to be a composer and make a living without computers and electronic devices.

Today the composer needs the new technology because of economic reason, and also can take advantage of many new possibilities in matter of sound, composition and realization.

B. Composition, creation, and realisation of an interactive musical piece situated in geometrical shapes, in a 3D world

To compose can be very different according to the purpose of the music. Concert music is perhaps the kind that let the composer be completely free. He lets his feelings talk, express themselves. But he also has to think, organize, sculpt his piece. This is a long work, like a sculptor that takes a piece of stone and will shape it. It takes a lot of time. You work, erase, come back, listen (in your mind, inside) again and again. When a composer has to write for someone else, it is different. For the theater, cinema, he has to know the subject, and decide with the director what will be the music. It will depend on the director’s taste, the budget, the style... So here he is not so free. The same for a music for an advert, a radio or TV jingle.

In the case of "3D MUSIC TETRAHEDRON " it is a little bit different. On one hand, I am more or less in the "concert music " situation. But on the other hand, I am not . I have to write in a certain style. And even more : in 7 different styles. Since I use the word "style", I am not free anymore. So I had to write a piece of music that would include several groups, that the user could listen to separately or mixed together. But basicly, the aim is to give the user a nice piece of music to listen to. More of that it is also a nice piece to look at.

Generally when people listen to music, they only listen to music; with "3D MUSICTETRAHEDRON ", they also have a nice 3D world to look at and it is a bit like a game, because they navigate in that world, and make the music, and the images change.