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A Sense of Style

This paper explores a compositional environment developed by the authors for simulating diverse musical styles. The methodology used for linking real-time musical instrument physical models with algorithms that mimic performance practices of Western and non-Western musics is described, as well as the ethical and aesthetic issues that necessarily result from this work. The compositional environment consists of several components: a set of real-time synthesis models implemented in RTcmix (real-time cmix), a LISP-based kernel in which "performance rules" are encoded, and a variety of high-level interfaces allowing for the creation and investigation of synthetic musical styles. These interfaces range from a basic ’style-space’ graphical system to an a-life model of music/cultural evolution, as well as a fundamental paradigm of interaction which has the interesting feature of exploring the pedagogy of learning to "play" a given computer instrument within a simulated musical tradition. All of this work is rooted in an expanded concept of musical representation, one which proceeds from the notion that music is generally best represented through performance rather than through abstract symbolic notation. In this environment, the locus of musical style is found in the actual realization of music instead of within a reductive, generated set of notes (or notes+rules). This captures the essence of musical style associated with many improvisatory traditions, both Western and non-Western. Musical cultures in which notation is an alien intrusion can be rendered directly using this expanded representation scheme. Modelling of cultural styles raises important questions about the ethical and aesthetic relationships existing between the synthetic style and the real music that inspired it --concerns that go beyond the standard copyright/ownership issues involved in direct sampling or quotation of extant music. Under the rubric of computer music, what we do is not really "real". However, the implications of what we do are rapidly becoming very real. What is appropriate appropriation? What compromises must be reached when musical cultures collide? The authors have been in contact with various organizations involved in the promotion of indigenous musics in order to address these complex issues.