Making Music with the iPhone

Date: December 17, 2009

The relationship between cellphones and music has almost always been a quirky one, producing bouts of the surreal punctuated by an occasional flourish of the sublime. Latest to join the melodic fray are Georg Essl from the University of Michigan and his "mobile phone ensemble." Each of the participating students has designed a noise-making app for his or her iPhone, which is used in conjunction with the built-in accelerometer and touchscreen to make (hopefully beautiful) music. Though we may consider this a gimmick for now, Professor Essl is most enthusiastic about the future prospects of utilizing smartphones to make music with legitimate aspirations. The debut performance of this newfangled orchestra is on December 9, or you can check out a preview in the video after the break.

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John Howell on December 17, 2009 10:10

Gee, Philip, one of our faculty members, about 25 years ago, suggested that we sponsor a Walkman Music Festival, where everyone in the crowd would start their Walkmans (Walkmen?) at the same time! I guess he was just a genertion ahead of his time!

But we do have a new and somewhat inexplicable phenomenon in our music department here: an L2ORK. To quote a description from this morning's paper: "With shiny half-sphere speakers and laptops on the floor and video game remotes in hand, the group gesturing in unison doesn't look like an orchestra. But they are. The group is L2ORK, Virginia Tech's laptop orchestra. Made up of eight students and a director, L2ORK uses the small MSI Wind laptop, painted IKEA salad bows fitted with six speakers and the free Linux operating system to make music."

Cutting edge? The wave of the future? Maybe. But the problem I have is that 99.99% of the emphasis is on the technology, not on the music, which according to one of the Lapists I work with in another ensemble is composed by members of the ensemble, none of whom have had any instruction (or demonstrated any talent) in musical composition. Some old saying about carts and horses comes to mind! "There is an online computer music course that some of the students plan to take next semester, they said. Only one student, a music technology and violin major, had taken it before the laptop orchestra. That helped him write a computer music composition."

So why do I have trouble taking this seriously as a MUSICAL activity?!!!!!

"There's a whole computer music community interested in exploring new ways of making music and making new sounds." Well, OK, but shouldn't the emphasis START with the music, and not with the technology?

OK, I'm a fuddy-duddy and I admit it, with a specialty in early music, no less. Maybe I just don't "get" the post-Theremin generation. (Or maybe they just don't get music!!)

All the best,

John

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