Curtis Roads

Curtis Roads is arguably one of the most important thinkers and composers of the electronic music cannon, publishing seminal work as Microsound and Composing Electronic Music. He is also widely known for being a pioneer in granular synthesis, and his work in music computing. I’ve been following for some time now Roads work and writings, and I have to admit that he is a big inspiration and influence on how I see music and sound. For more information click here.

Recently I heard the podcast of Darwin Grosse Art+Music+Technology where he interviewed Roads. They discussed about Roads creative practice and his early influences in electronic music and computing. Roads explained that his musical compositions are handcrafted, being meticulously created and fined tuned. He explained he could spend months and even years creating a single composition, slowly memorising every small detail of the composition, creating a detail map of it in its head. Then he explained that this helps a lot in his performances, as he explained that he does sound diffusions with them and that by precisely knowing the layout and elements of his compositions, he is able to correctly spatialise them in order to create an effective narrative in the performance. This was very surprising to find out about Roads because electronic music is regularly dependent of automatic mediums of sequencing sonic material, he instead goes against this by composing his sound in a very controlled and precise way. The interview can be found here.

Furthermore I’ve been reading sections of Microsound, because I’m deeply interested in granular synthesis and might incorporate it in the instrument I’m going to create for the portfolio work. I’ve also been researching and exploring writings by sound artists/musicians that combine a scientific experimental methodology of research with their aesthetic research on sound and art. Another example of this that I’m reading is Treatise of The Musical object by Pierre Schaeffer. I’m very curious of this type of writing and research and I’m also thinking of incorporating it in my portfolio work. In the book Roads writes:

“A grain of sound is a brief microacoustic event, with a duration near the threshold of human auditory perception, typically between one thousandth of a second and one tenth of a second (from 1 to 100 ms). Each grain contains a waveform shaped by an amplitude envelope. A single grain serves as a building block for sound objects. By combining thousands of grains over time, we can create animated sonic atmospheres. “

This description of the synthesis method opens up the dialogue of the materialistic nature of sound. To think about microsound, is to change your perspective in the building block of sound. By reading this book I’ve extended my conceptual knowledge of granular synthesis, and changed my perception of how sound is actually built upon.

I’ve used a lot of different granular synthesis tools, like Qu-bits Nebulae, Granulator 2 and Sound Grain, and I find the technology to be incredibly powerful. The sonic possibilities of granular are incredibly vast, always creating fresh sound design. In my portfolio project I want to create a granular synthesiser that process grain in my own manner, granting me personalized meticulous control over sound object, just as how Curtis Roads works in his compositions.