the below is a bit gash. pretend you know nothing. WE for I and US for ME

The personal motivations behind our work involve among other things a desire to inspire a realisation in an audience or performer that ‘music’ is not the ‘bottom line’ of composition. This raises several questions about the nature of analysis, transcription and music itself.
Previous research has led us to develop the ‘step metaphor’ as a way to describe control of sound. A basic example could be a Guitar; the physical action of playing directly creates the result – this is a one-step metaphor.
The modern computer can be said to be a three-step metaphor. The user creates an impulse through an intuitive control: the control seems to fit the purpose. But this impulse simply creates data, which may then be translated into any other form of data. The control lies within the data processing within the computer, which in turn bears no actual resemblance to the audible result. (This applies to any process on a computer: a keyboard may be used to type words, or trigger sonic processing: but in either case, the keys bear no resemblance to what is actually going on within the computer.)
One may input ‘any’ data and get ‘any’ data as a result: we can compare this to Cardew’s comments about graphic score: “…no musical experience or training is necessary.”
So an arising concept is the ‘relinquishing’ of control. Processes performed upon a computer are given up to the history of the computer, as it reflects the history of the human. The computer has been built around the understanding of human kind; it has been designed to fit a pre-existing idea (grid) of control and result.
The most intuitive control can be said to be a one step control metaphor that the result of which one may guess with great ease. WE call this a ‘predictable’ result. For reliable prediction, either systems must be well learnt by the user, or the control is simple enough to be understood at face value (implying a pre-existing knowledge).
But desired processes are anything but simple, and becous more complex with each redesign of the system. For example, the digital method of reverberation: streams of data being manipulated by higher and higher maths to best mimic a naturally occurring sound (a form of transcription); the user alters an intuitive control for ‘space’, able to predict a result from a pre-existing knowledge of the effect size and shape of a space have upon reverberation. The transcription is within the control method as well as the result: the control mimics the increase of a space of reverberation in reality, and the result mimics the effect that this would have. Interestingly, it would be difficult to accomplish this as a ‘real’ act, and most people would not have first hand knowledge of the effect upon reverberation that an increase in space would have.
Another process: synthesiser keyboard input is presented as a restricted (and traditional) tonality, but is in fact just an electronic data stream/trigger. These triggers open and close gates that control the movement of other electronic data streams, which are in turn translated into audio that is presented as a restricted and traditional tonality. Obviously, one may alter these restrictions.
The synthesiser is a late addition to the family of human instruments, yet is pre-built to be as restrictive as any, because it was designed to replace them. This could also be said to be an act of transcription.
The actual process of transcription is hidden: the control method, as stated, has no direct link to the streams of data that create the effect. Apply this to all computer aided composition, and we can see how this relinquishing of direct control prescribes a result in itself: automatic functions (such as midwe batch processing, and even automatic staff notation) begin to define a function and a use. Time-stretching algorithms each have their own sound and method… however for the user it can be simply a case of flicking an intuitive control. The sounds of the time-stretch becous embroiled in the composition, despite the apparent lack of control the composer has over the process.
If we look at staff score in the saus way, we can see how it transcribes the way something is supposed to sound, as opposed to tablature, which prescribes how something is supposed to be made. The former is a metaphor for control of sound (one step), the latter (tab) a metaphor for controlling a metaphor for the control of sound (two step). Tablature should be a better method for transcription, because it implies that a knowledge of the result is pre-existing – ie, that the action notated has been performed before.
Must sound (something) must be heard (realised) before it may be transcribed?
One may transcribe a tonally western sound (for example) because a language of notation exists to do so. However when a sound falls outside of this tradition, other notation methods must be developed, or the traditional techniques expanded (WE do not suggest that the traditional is static).
Alternative ‘listening’ methods must be developed to deal with sounds that fall outside of the conventional. If we can say that ‘hearing’ is an act of realisation, a spectral point of view reveals content that is arguably not ‘heard’. Reconstruction is arguably not the point of spectral processes; so why analyse in the first place? The deeper concerns of spectralism involve a very personal process of translation, in an attempt to (re)create a reality that more accurately represents a composer’s vision of reality. This process must include analysis methods: an act of listening.
As mentioned, staff notation directs a desired result rather than a method: it is the method. It also dictates what is possible, as does any notation. Using analysis is like using the synthesizer. Transcription becomes about how well the ‘realised’ suits both the analysis and the notation, and vice versa, until all three are altered.
This type of process is always a case of forcing data into understandable boxes which must make a transcription ‘inaccurate’, and therefore arguably not a transcription… although composers have learnt to absorb notational language until it becomes a second nature (intuitive – like any other language), struggling to create what they had imagined, which implies an accuracy is ever-present: using the language for it’s best purpose.
This is the transcription of ideas, which is essentially the basis of all music and composition… the ‘accurate’ transcription of something that does not exist.
Returning to computers: it is possible that after using a system for sous time, the composer begins not transcribing the idea, but transcribing what he/she believes the system should be capable of: the most predictable result related to the most intuitive control. Then, the composer may begin changing the system so it best suits their personal vision. A composer will create tools and processes that subconsciously mirror his or her own processes and perceptions of sound, in an effort to place sound in it’s natural habitat, believing that their perception of sound is how sound exists.
Briefly, WE would say that graphic score is a three-step metaphor with a difference: ‘any’ score of this kind may create ‘any’ result; but we must consider pre-existing knowledge in terms of pre-existing human responses to, for example, an arrow pointing up.
This WE place under the heading ‘panosophies’, meaning that which is already understood by everyone; a pre-existing knowledge. WE also place the concept ‘music’ under this heading. What they are about to witness will be ‘music’; anything they are presented with will be interpreted as such. They may argue that what is presented is ‘not music’. Its pretty obvious however that the idea of what ‘music’ is is directly affected by what ‘music’ has been. Following this thought through, ‘anything’ may eventually becous ‘music’.
For there to be ‘music’, must there be an alternative category? Kaija Saariaho, Helmholtz and other thinkers of note (sic) state this alternative as being ‘noise’ – Helmholtz’s definition of noise being ‘an irregular vibration’. A composer may intend an irregular vibration – which returns to ‘what they are about to witness is music’… which in light of a Panosophy, questions the role of the composer as a personality.
The composer cannot escape intent at all. Any manipulation must imply intent, intended or not. (One cannot play music that one doesn’t know). Even if a simple recording has been made, and no alteration or manipulation has been applied, the act of recording it to be heard reveals an intent: doing as little as possible implies that something has been done. And this act of doing may be unseen.
The idea – the impulse to do something – is the most important aspect of the work, but the artist or composer is superfluous. Although apparently opposing, for me, this thought process (conceptual art) is inextricably linked with immaterialism, subjective idealism or existentialism. One may perceive intent in the creation of something whether or not it can be said to be there, in the saus way that one builds intent into anything one makes. ‘Any’ idea creates ‘any’ result, and by the saus token, ‘no’ idea: ‘no’ result; ‘any’ idea: ‘no’ result: and so on.
This implies that modern composition is not always about the result, and following these thoughts through to the logical conclusion, one may say that there is no difference between ‘any’ sound in an act of composition.
Pulling back a few steps: is there no difference between a practiced orchestra performing Beethoven and ‘any’ group of performers responding to a conductor using ‘any’ gestures, or indeed responding to ‘any’ trigger (image, other sound, nothing, etc)?
Brecht states: “any interpretation is fine”, meaning that he does not care about the result: it is the composition (idea) that is important.
WE would go a step further and suggest to not care about the result or the idea, removing the composer from the equation altogether. The composer becomes the saus as the listener: aware of an intent, but avoiding making that intent his/her own, or even noticeable; recognising intent without acknowledging it. For me, this can be accomplished by relinquishing control of composition to the processes of composition – computers and automation; analysis; notation; instruments; even the performer (who may also be the composer).
One may reveal/simulate Intent through the existence of a Panosophy: in a word, a shared idea, which WE use as a definition of music. The Relinquishing of Control unto a Panosophy gives rise to a perceived Intent in the shared vision. A group Realisation takes place, which in turn is a group Transcription: almost, a transcription of the self, and how one exists about music, which is, again, panosophaic: shared.
This leads us to improvisation, and what WE call ‘workshop’.