Essays and
Reviews
Todd
Barton's "metaScapes"
New Music with MetaSynth
The title of Todd Barton’s
outstanding new album begs the question, what is a
metaScape?
In the particular case of this
album, a metaScape is of course a creative work that
happens to employ new music technology, called MetaSynth.
More will be said about this technology in the interview
with Todd that is appended to this review. Suffice to say
here, MetaSynth is one of a variety of new computer
software programs that emulate the functions of
conventional music synthesizers. The electronic music
studio has been typically a patch-quilt agglomeration of
cumbersome keyboard and rack-mounted synthesizer and
sound processing modules, connected all together by a
nightmarish tangle of audio and other cables in a
bewildering complexity of configurations. But now, many
musicians are turning to the general-purpose personal
computer to replace all of this gear. Understandably, the
simplification in the design of the studio seems to
enable a commensurate increase in the beauty and
distinction of the music. Such is the certainly case with
the music of Mr. Barton.
There is, however, a deeper meaning
to be found in the title of this album. This larger
meaning helps us to probe not only the place and
significance of the music of "metaScapes" in
particular, but also to focus once again on its relation
to the whole process of revolutionary development in
music generally speaking that was initiated by the
ideological and technological movements of the 20th
century. For if the pieces in this album are metaScapes,
one can imagine that this is their particular
distinction. A metaScape may be a new word intended to
describe a new thing, part and parcel of the radical
newness of music in our time. Yet, this possibility may
also lead us to remember that "symphony" was a
new word in its day, likewise invented to describe
something new.
Being at some remove now from the
volatile arguments that accompanied the musical life of
the last century, we may be able to see more clearly that
all of its revolutionary fervor only highlighted a
process of constant musical change that began with the
birth of the art itself. In other words, the whole
process that has given rise in the present instance to
the music of "metaScapes" may not after all be
limited in scope only to contemporary developments in
music, let alone to the invention of the electronic music
synthesizer. Instead, it is coterminous with the entire
history of classical music in our culture, which renders
our impression of this music less subject to our
consciousness of the newness of its sound.
Approaching this realization from
another direction, we may wonder if a metaScape is just a
new name for something that is actually not new at all,
except in the way that every original work of music is
new. We may then wonder if any and all music could be
called a metaScape in some sense of the word. In
considering the title of this album, we may even hope to
disclose something about the nature of music, per se.
Clearly, for the composer, the
title "metaScape," refers to something else
quite apart from its connection with MetaSynth, for one
easily associates the title with the idea of the
landscape. And, we are confirmed in this association of
ideas by some of the titles given to the individual
tracks on the album. "Forbidden Palace."
"Forbidden Chamber." "Terrain." Yes,
even, "Dark Landscape."
As it happens, the representation
of a landscape is itself one of the principal metaphors
applied to the function of art in general, being a
subsidiary aspect of the ancient Greek definition of art
as a reflection of Nature. There are other metaphors,
which resemble it in essence. For example, at one point
during the 1960s, a period when modernism in the plastic
arts achieved full maturity, the Museum of Modern Art in
New York presented a show entitled, "The Image of
Man." It purported to encompass all of the varied
developments in modernist art within the rubric of that
fundamental human metaphor. After all, it is not entirely
obvious what constitutes the image or reflection of a
man. One might take the x-ray photograph of a man as
emblematic of this fact. It will not look very much like
the person we ordinarily recognize, but it is his image
nonetheless. In similar wise, so the museum suggested, an
abstract painting may be the image of another kind of
interior man, not ordinarily recognized, but real.
The word "landscape"
became originally associated with art during the 16th
century by the Dutch, whose artists were the first to
master the depiction of the earth itself, and thereby
made it a suitable subject of artistic interest. The
English word comes out of the Dutch landschap referring
to a region or tract of land. According to the New
American Dictionary, "The fascinating thing is that
34 years pass after the first recorded use of landscape
in English before the word is used of a view or vista of
natural scenery. This delay suggests that people were
first introduced to landscapes in paintings and then saw
landscapes in real life." The imaginary product of
the artistic consciousness is here transformed into a
substantial reality recognized by all and sundry. This
may possibly be the most essential function of art: i.e.,
to dispel the illusions that people take to be reality,
and to reveal the reality in what people take to be
illusions. Reasoning along these lines, one might suppose
that a time may come when people will recognize real
metaScapes in Nature. At least in the opinion of this
reviewer, appropriating Byron’s verse, there is
"no ear so dull, no soul so cold," but can hear
the reality in the metaScaped illusions presented by Mr.
Barton.
The application of the word
"landscape" to music partakes of a larger and
more conventional notion of musical space (these are only
some of the related metaphors that help us to talk about
the ineffable, the indescribable, and the insubstantial).
Its use in music probably greatly postdates its use in
the art of painting. It has less relevance perhaps to the
musical space depicted in the highly abstract, and
so-called "absolute" music of the Baroque and
Classical eras. However, it would be a mistake to assume
that it came to be applied to music only when composers
took a more active interest in the design of new
orchestral sonorities, thus creating individualized
depictions of a more personalized musical space. When
Debussy’s music was called
"impressionistic," to his chagrin, people tried
to express with that term the way in which the composer
split "light" in novel ways, painting
orchestral "landscapes" with "colors"
that had never before been imagined. But it is also worth
remembering that Debussy’s "colors" were
as much a function of the new harmonic and melodic
entities and procedures that he employed. It will be seen
that, in this respect, by virtue of revealing new
harmonic "regions" or "territories,"
he was very much in accord with the pulse and momentum of
his historical muse.
Much could be said about the way in
which the words "space," and
"region," and "territory," are
applied in music. One could, for example, examine the
correspondence between on the one hand humanity’s
relation to the physical and social reality implied by
these words, and on the other hand, the artist’s
handling of the musical entities that these words define.
Thus, during the Middle Ages, a man’s immediate
geography, and the human culture expressed in it, were
the be all and end all of his experience. There was,
it’s true, the implicit exoticism of Dante’s
Heaven and Hell. But these too existed in a
hierarchically constructed here and now of consciousness
that was also perfectly expressed in music within the
austere limitations of a small number of ordered tones
(say five or seven).
Can it be mere coincidence that
while Columbus sailed the ocean blue, madrigalists in
Italy were suddenly employing the full
"chromatic" of twelve tones? In so doing, they
created complex tonal arrangements that hinted at
musically exotic "territories" unheard of in
the days of the flat earth. But what a chaos of space
they revealed to us; nowhere any order whatsoever; the
relations between harmonic regions being arbitrary and
entirely subject to the whim of the musical adventurer.
No rule. No law. Might made right, and one highly
chromatic madrigalist is even reputed to have committed
murder to prove it (Gesualdo).
Not the least curious aspect of
chaos is that it cannot endure, this being a perverse
feature of the tiresome and repetitive cycles that we are
condemned to tread on the earthly plane. Just when one is
getting used to the mess that has been made of things,
someone comes along and brings order out of confusion.
And so, just when the great European powers were drawing
borders and coming to some accommodation amongst
themselves as to the rules and limitations under which
they would individually undertake the exploitation of
their colonies in the New World and in Africa, just then
came composers who fashioned a map of musical space
subject to the laws of harmonic relations that is
familiar to us. The system of order that they devised
will always be remembered as one of the most sublime
products of the human artistic sensibility. It is the
harmonic system of the so-called common-practice period,
elaborated in its fullness roughly from the time of Bach
to that of Wagner. In its purview, every harmonic region
was accessed according to a coherent protocol of
relationships that was every bit as subtle and powerful
as the political diplomacy of the time. Nation-state
policy united the physical world, and common-practice
tonality governed the musical world, in systems that were
at least comprehensive, if not optimally satisfactory in
other respects.
Yet neither could that particular
order endure. Thus did the international order break down
during the 20th century. And, at the same time, the tonal
order could hardly be maintained. As Yeats said,
"the center cannot hold." The system of
harmonic relationships, describing musical space as
organized around a tonal center, came under much abuse
and attack. It had been supposed that all of musical
space had been discovered and mapped. People were in for
a big surprise.
Once again, musicians went
exploring uncharted territories. And, new vehicles of
transport became fortuitously available to them. The
breakdown of established norms in the combination of
orchestral instruments gave rise to an unprecedented
deluge of new sounds. Once again, these were as much the
product of new combinations of conventional orchestral
timbres as they were of new harmonic combinations. But it
is impossible to deny the importance of instrumental
innovations in bringing about the change. Ultimately,
sounds originating even outside the realm of conventional
orchestral instruments began to be imported into the
musical palette of sound.
Here, too, the historical
development has been from the beginning all of a piece.
When the Popes ruled the musical domain, the human voice
was the only timbre worthy of the art. Instruments of all
kinds were abhorrent to many in the Church. (Who knows?
The violin, with its supposed darkly pagan roots in India
may have set off the Medieval divine in much the same way
as the sound of the saxophone terrified those early 20th
century classical musicians who viewed "jazz"
as the product of a deeply despised Africa.) They could
not, however, hold back the musical tide. By the time of
the madrigalists, use within the art had been found for a
full compliment of viols, and a plethora of wind and
brass instruments. And, then, again, came the assertion
of power and dominance to establish norms and create
standards of value. It is a fact that the Renaissance
"orchestra" was a much more varied thing than
the "classical" equivalent. So many
instrumental timbres were exiled to the periphery when
the conventional symphonic orchestra came into being.
Most instruments of the earlier period did not survive
into our time. Fortunately, the loss was more than made
up for when, in the last century, electronic instruments
made the musical element of timbre into a matter of
literally infinite ramification.
All these developments in harmony
and instrumentation were marshaled into the service of
"painting" the musical landscape, or, if you
will, in the present instance, a metaScape. We should
probably favor the word "metaScape" since it
pinpoints the metaphorical nature of the notion of
musical space. A metaScape is a metaphysical entity. Any
"meta" thing is derivative by nature. Every
musical work ever composed may, in this light, be
considered a metaScape. This means that nothing is
"new" in Mr. Barton’s album except the
unique expression of a distinctive musical personality in
original works of great fascination and beauty. This is
exactly how it should be in the practice of any art. The
revolutionary technology employed in its creation is in
this sense merely of technical interest, and in no way
explicatory of the artistic content in the music.
To appreciate and understand the
music of "metaScapes," as distinct from simply
knowing something about its fabrication, one needs to
listen with an open mind, heart, and spirit - just as one
needs to do with any other music by any other composer in
any other medium, in any other time. This is music that
bears deep contemplation. The highly advanced state of
the technology employed in its creation is witnessed
precisely by the susceptibility of Mr. Barton’s
music to purely musical analysis and evaluation. This was
not always true of electronic music in the days when one
made certain "allowances" for the limitations
of the hardware and software. The music of metaScapes
presents musical ideas in the conventional sense of the
term, developing those ideas across musical time and
space with "classical" reason and sense of
proportion. It partakes of the same eloquence of
expression that is the hallmark of all art music. In
short, it is music that manifests the highest functions
of the human spirit.
This now said, and hopefully having
reduced the importance of the purely technical to its
proper level, what can we learn about MetaSynth, and
about making music with it on a personal computer?
*********************************************************************
Interview with Todd
Barton
Question: In your studio, what kind
of computer is running MetaSynth, and what musical
controllers (such as keyboard, or breath) do you use to
interface with the program? The sounds seem to be created
out of pre-existing elements in some cases, i.e.
instrumental or percussive sounds, chimes, etc. Do you
use digital audio samples as raw material that is then
processed musically by MetaSynth? Do you use a separate
"audio-editing" program along with MetaSynth?
T.B.: I'm using a Mac G4 (265
Ram/450 Mhz/26 G hd) but it runs quite well on PowerBooks
and G3's. The important thing is to have as much RAM as
you can afford since the program is pixel based and
renders pictures into sound and music. Regarding
controllers, I just use the mouse and the qwerty
keyboard. MetaSynth was designed by genius, Eric Wenger,
to be an all-in-one box environment. The complete
"suite" of software includes MetaSynth, an
image based synthesis/sample playback and editing tool;
Xx, a powerful midi-style sequencer with awesome
algorithmic compositional tools (and a special feature
that allows the saving of midi, piano roll notation as a
picture that can then be opened in MetaSynth and further
manipulated as an image); and Metatrack, a 16 track,
stereo multi-track environment with individual effects,
pan, volume and fades on each track.
MetaSynth can use as its sound
source: digital samples, subtractive synthesis, granular
synthesis, and fm synthesis. Every parameter is user
definable and completely interactive. For instance, you
can record a vocal or speech phrase directly into the
MetaSynth sample editor, then do a Fast Fourier Transform
analysis of the wave (turning the vocal sample into
hundreds of sine waves), and then use that audio
"x-ray" as a guide to paint other timbres of
sounds into the natural harmonic structure of the
original sample. Then, of course, you can take this newly
created sound and use it as the original source for a
sound picture painted in MetaSynth's Image Synth.
Basically, every pixel on the
screen is a discrete oscillator with it's own amplitude
envelope, it own filter envelope and it's own panning
envelope. So. . . you can have up to 1024 oscillators!!
That is why you want lots of RAM, since, once you've
created a picture, it then may be "rendered" in
order to hear the results and that "rendering"
takes place in RAM. Once you've created a picture you can
invert it,
repeat it at different pitch
centers, overlay and out-jog it, apply retrograde, and
retrograde inversion, filter out parts and use them as
new secondary material in a formal composition. . . it is
truly infinite in possibilities!
A sample editor is part of the main
MetaSynth window. Besides having lots of specific editing
tools: cut, paste, crossfade loop, reverse, interpolate,
etc. There is also a powerful Effects Palette that
includes grain synthesis, echo, resonator, harmonizer,
phase vocoder, shuffler, flanger, phaser. . . These
effects can be auditioned in real time and the parameters
varied with a virtual joystick. Quite awesome!
Question: Where do you actually mix
the many sounds employed in each piece?
T.B.: In Metatrack (see above).
Question: MetaSynth plays through
the computer sound card. What kind of sound card is
required to produce the quality of sound that you have
recorded in your mp3 album?
T.B.: Most of the music on my site
was done through an AudioMedia III sound card, but my
most recent piece (at the time of this interview),
Foreric: piano study, was done through the G4's sound
card and sounds quite impressive for a piano sample with
brass washes. At present, MetaSynth is designed for
16-bit sampling.
Question: Does MetaSynth allow for
any of the "real-time" fun that comes from
playing a musical instrument, or is it all numbers and
algorithms and programming, programming, programming
(!!@#$@@!!!!)?
T.B.: As mentioned earlier,
MetaSynth renders sounds and music and is thus not a
real-time instrument. But the deep, endless possibilities
of sound and its sculpting is well worth the lack of real
time. It is, simply put, a real compositional tool and
musical environment. Instead of algorithms, numbers and
programming, the interface is more akin to PhotoShop or
CorelDraw. MetaSynth is a paradigm shift, a metaphor of
music as color and space. MetaSynth is like vodka, it
takes on the taste of whatever you put in it and enhances
the experience!
To quote from U & I Software:
"Computer music, sound design, 2D illustration, 3D
graphics and multimedia: These fields always need new
research, new techniques and better tools, which requires
a passion, renewed daily. U & I has this passion,
plus the urge to develop serious toys for creative
people. The U&I team are experienced artists involved
in both music and graphics, and they're the first users
of the products they design. That is why U&I makes
friendly software that is creative, recreational,
productive and inexpensive, since we think that creation
tools should be accessible to anyone."
More information on MetaSynth
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