The OM composer's book. Vol. 2

Following up on the positive experience of The OM Composer's Book.1, this book proposes a collection of essays written by various composers describing some of their musical works carried out with the computer-aided composition environment OpenMusic. OpenMusic is a visual programming language dedicated to music composition, designed and developed at IRCAM. It is the result of several years of research and compositional experience, and is now used by many contemporary music composers for many different purposes. It provides composers with computational and representational possibilities which allow them to develop personal compositional processes and experiments.

The main objective of this book is to provide an overview of the possible uses and applications of this environment, but also of a computer system in general, in the context of musical creation. Several approaches are described throughout the different chapters concerning, for instance, compositional applications on musical time, on rhythmic or harmonic structures, on sound synthesis or on spatialization. The book also reveals composers' reflections on various compositional issues such as the problem of representation, musical style, musical constraints, or the use of sound analysis data in music composition.

This book contains a wide range of examples of computer-aided composition and may also help the reader to understand the compositional processes behind the pieces concerned or behind the general musical thought of their authors. It will therefore serve as a reference for readers wishing to learn about OpenMusic, computer-aided composition, and current issues related to the association of music and computer sciences.