by James Bohn and Scott Wyatt
Many EMS/CMP alumni attended the 1996 conference of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, which was hosted by Charles Mason, in Birmingham, Alabama. Many of these alumnists had presented compositions, gave papers, or performed. Faculty members Scott Wyatt and James Beauchamp also attended. Professor Wyatt's composition A Time of Being was performed at the conference.
The 1996 Festival of Ugly New Music to be held July 24-29 will feature an all Hiller concert. This concert will include his Fifth Piano Sonata (1961) played by EMS alumnist Drew Krause. Also featured will be Five Appalachian Ballads for voice and guitar (1958), performed by Mark Zanter and Julianne Cross. Other works to be presented are currently in the planning stage.
Composer Barry Truax of Simon Fraser University will be in residence here at the University of Illinois in October, 1996.
Truax studied science at Queen's University in Kingston and music at the University of British Columbia. He pursued further music studies at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht with Koenig and Laske.
His Sonic Landscape No. 3 won first prize in the computer music category of the 1977 International Competition of Electroacoustic Music in Bourges. In 1980 Arras recieved honorable mention at the same competition. Since 1972, Truax has been a major developer and user of the POD software system for music composition and sound synthesis. He was the host of the 1985 ICMC held in Vancouver.
In addition to numerous articles on computer music, Truax is author of Acoustic Communication, and has co-authored Five Village Soundscapes. He serves as editor of the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology, from the Music of the Environment series of World Soundscape documents. He is also the founder of Cambridge Street Records.
Studio D has taken on a very different look, and construction/installation should be completed by early fall semester. The new Studio D (an advanced MIDI and software synthesis studio) will be centered around the KYMA System, Kurzweil synthesizers (future plans include the purchase of K2500s), an Ensoniq ESI-32 sampler and Digidesign's Soundtools II (hopefully Protools by mid fall). Aside from the available digital mixing with Digidesign's system, two Yamaha ProMix mixers (offering 32 inputs and 4 outputs) are being installed for MIDI controlled automated mixing. Two Sony PCM-2600 DATs, an Alesis ADAT with BRC remote autolocating (a second ADAT is planned) and a Yamaha CD recorder will also be installed. Software sound processing applications SoundHack and Hyperprism will be added to the Centris 650 which has had additional memory and a speed doubler added as well. A 1G external hard disk along with a DAT tape drive back-up unit has also been incorporated. New near field monitors (Alesis Monitor Ones) powered by an Alesis RA-100 power amplifier should improve imaging with lower volume monitoring in comparison to what we used previously.
In addition to the new equipment, specially-designed cabinets were built to comply with federal ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) requirements to better serve our students and faculty. The cabinets were designed by Scott Wyatt and allow for significant future expansion and versatility as well as a better ergonomic feel. All cabinets were constructed by the University of Illinois O & M Mill. Special lighting is also being added to reduce eye strain when working long hours with the computer.
Scott Wyatt, Mike Pounds, Peter Roubal, Chin-Chin Chen and Qiong Liu are handling the studio rewiring which is hoped to be completed by early fall.
Studio D overhead view.
Side View: Consoles 2A, 3B, and 4.