Something that has been on my mind a lot lately is how music is composed, notated and interpreted for performance in this day and age. We have the image. We have the timeline. We have waveforms and automation lines. I wonder, as digital music progresses, if we will start to see a merge of both design and composition. The ability to communicate clusters of information visually has been around (I’m assuming) even longer than classical music notation. I take notes on musical staffs all the time because they are so helpful in notating change overtime, however, I am curious to see what we can do that goes far and beyond the limitations of pencil and paper. How to make and organize relevant visual languages to digital musicians will be an exciting new frontier in the musical world.

Below I’ve taken screenshots of the automation lanes of the same sample over time. Notice the peaks and valleys – these peaks and valleys have a direct relationship to how one should adjust their nob over time. Providing a template with more designated variables to multiple performers would allow you to compose DELAY, REVERB, DISTORTION and a HI-CUT, for example, for another musician to understand. Providing additional designations would be necessary to ensure that the musicians fully understand the language system. Luckily, Ableton Live is a fairly popular DAW amongst laptop musicians, and can hopefully provide enough standardization that would allow consistency between composition and realization.

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I do wonder, as new forms of composition surface, if these unique systems offer any future modularity. Can these systems be built upon and expanded? Can they be reused by other composers? As the tools to compose in visual media continue to develop, our collective communication concerning electronic music has the potential to increase dramatically. Just as classical notation served (and serves) its purpose, a new form of composition will begin to develop to fit the needs of a new media.