Class Musical Informatics: Composition, Research and Performance

Music informatics allows the exploration of a vast interdisciplinary field, through problems that are situated on the border between music and various scientific disciplines, such as computer sciences, cognitive sciences, mathematics or acoustics. In this discipline, students acquire specific skills for composition, research and/or performance in computer music, including knowledge of sound programming languages which become the tools to a final project. Timbre, space and, mainly, automation are the fundamental dimensions of music in the 20th and 21st centuries, expressing a proliferation of aesthetics and computational technologies. It is intended that students develop critical skills about the in-depth use of computers and their relationship with sound, through theoretically reflecting on the proposed problems as well as carrying out activities of a practical nature.

This course is centered on musical informatics through three fundamental axes: Composition, Research and Performance.
The program seeks to discuss the role of automation in today's music, reflecting on the evolution of electronic music, its numerous languages, technologies and aesthetics, from musique concrète to computer music.
It addresses, among other topics:
1. Algorithms in Sonic Arts.
2. Computer-assisted musical composition;
3. Algorithmic score generation.
4. Probabilities and Grammars.
5. Interactive algorithms.
6. Chaos and Fractals.
7. Neural Networks and music.
8. Genetic Algorithms and Evolutionary musicology.
9. Sound and Artificial Intelligence
These topics are open, working as stimuli for students. Within one of the three major areas of the discipline, students should carry out, autonomously, a theoretical/artistic/technical investigation, considering the associated technological resources as well as the resulting performative and aesthetic modes.

The teaching methodology consists of theoretical classes (using audiovisual and multimedia materials) and practical classes, centered on musical informatics. In addition to the theoretical exposition, advanced computer languages will be used, concerning sound programming, such as Supercollider or FAUST.

Barlow, C. (2012) On Musiquantics  Musicological Institute of the University of Mainz

Cottle, D. M. (2006) Computer Music with examples in SuperCollider 3. University of California 

Licata, T. (ed.) (2002) Electroacoustic Music. Analytical Perspectives. Praeger 

Miranda. E. R. (2001) Composing music with computers. Focal Press

Nierhaus, G. (2009) Algorithmic Composition. Paradigms of Automated Music Generation. Springer

Roads, C. (2002) Microsound. MIT Press

Xenakis, I. (1992) Formalized Music. Thought and mathematics in composition. Pendragon Press

Wilson, S., Cottle, D. and Collins, N. (eds). (2011). The SuperCollider Book. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press