Sam Samshuijzen

- M U X - formerly called Nusic -

Not an attempt to write a consistent theory with proof
Just notations, a scrapbook, about the concepts involved

STUDIO DENKRAAM - first saved 3/01/01 Updated 8/10/03

CHAPTERS

Autophonic Sampling Trackers Instruments Composition Music Frequencies Solf�ge

If Music is a tree, Mux is another tree, not just another branch of the same one.

I think it's time to spread the compost and plant the seed.
Let's face it :
In the 20th century, with the radio and the playable disks or tapes, Music has had a drastic evolution.
From an art-event of audible imagination, it has drifted away from that,
to become more and more a source of amusement (and mass-business).
A-muse ?'

Promoting Mux doesn't mean that I don't like Music.
It's just something else in the audible field, like photography is just something else
in the visual field with different roots than paintings or movies or sculptures.
I enjoy good Musicians, the tonescales and skillful compositions.
But nowadays (properly speaking since some 30 yrs ago) much more is going on.
In fact, I feel a bit sorry for the Music tree at the moment, because it looks
mostly like a weeping willow with all branches pointing down due to the weight of
all those side- and sub-branches.
Speaking about the last 30 yrs.. I.m.o. lots of Mux has been made already, without
knowing it. So it could be very healthy for the Music-tree too, if these elements could
hop over to the Mux-tree to grow there (and much more freely, I predict).

In Music a flute is made for human use, so it has a mouthpiece to produce the sound
and holes to play the frequencies.
Since humans have ten fingers, the holes are limited around that number.
In Mux the number of holes could be infinite.
And so are the mouthpieces..
Scientifically speaking these things are never pure infinite, but always within a certain range.
With analogue systems it's the range of (voltage)power available, in binary systems it's the resolution.

--------- 4/01
AUTOPHONIC

Mux is usually made with Autophonic instruments.
But using Autophonic instruments will not automatically mean, that you are making Mux.

Autophonic (hereafter : "AP")
AP means 'able of making sound by itself'.
AP instruments are devices/contraptions that are capable of sound as long as they are activated.
Most of the time at present stage the energy will come from electricity.
The main differences with non-AP instruments :
No need to put energy (blowing, striking, etc) in it to make it sound.
Only the playing is left, but that doesn't mean that it's easier.
A new, more detailed field demands attention :
Modulation.
This can be a control of different aspects : volume, frequency, shape, etc.
With non-AP it's : "if you do nothing, there's no sound".
With AP it's : "if you don't do something, the sound will go on and on..".

So the situation is kind of reverse with the classical :
First you need a control to mute the instrument, i.e. a fader or an on/off switch.
So, very first, a mixing table is not to make it sound, but to make silence.
Then, if you want playing, you need a control to activate (in the sense of
making some audible output) the instrument. This can be a trigger in the
form of an pulse, a keypress, a program running a file, etc.

These things have a great impact on f.e. the notation of a composition.
If you have a sequencer running it would be totally useless to describe this
process in the Music-way by writing down the same 6 notes 1024 times on
a classical Music-score (and maybe while the uppertones of the sound is
modulated passing through a band-pass-filter with variating Q).

Notes are much less important, the Changes are.

Also here some kind of reversement :
In a Music-score at the beginning of the horizontal staff, the instrument is declared.
After that, the notes are notated in time.
In Mux it could be that the note-information is declared at first.
Then the changes of modulation or instrument is written in time as the score.
A so-called Tracker-module is a good example of that, although it's read
'vertical' and the staff is called a 'channel'.

--------- 5/01
SAMPLING

As soon as electronic echo-devices came into the picture, it was easy to predict that sampling was going to be.
A matter of time to increase speed, quality and memory-space.
Used as an AP-instrument a sample doesn't have to be just a recording of the note 'A' played on a known instrument.
It can also be the recording of a cluster of soundsources or a sequence in time, like two bars of a piece of Music.
If the playback-frequency is the same as the recording-frequency the sample produces its original sound.
But it can be played in any other freq. as well, depending of the resolution of the playback-device.
Making a high-quality sample is quite some work.
It's not just touch the 'record - stop' buttons, which is still done too often.
With wave-editors on a computer it is possible to edit samples upto
changing the digital value of one single sample-point, so 'microscopic'..
I.m.o. the first advice of making a good quality sample should be :
It should start with a zero-value, and end with a zero-value.
(a simple way to avoid nasty ticks at the start or the end of the playback).

If you sample a sound, normally you have automatically three different sample-sources at your disposal :
It depends on the playback-freq. A matter of figurative use:
Around the original freq. you have it like an instr. with a certain range.
At very low playback you have a kind of noisy rumble, useful as such.
At very high-speed playback you can use the same sample as percussion.

Also in Music, a nice use of a sampling-device would be to built it in a microphone.
Today, these things are often battery-feeded, so technically that wouldn't be a problem.
A few buttons on the mike to record and play a word or a phrase plus a
mixing-part to combine the real-time source and the sampler would give
a singer the possibility to repeat things without effort, or sing the
second voice together with the first recorded phrase...

------------6/01
TRACKERS

Trackers were first used on Amiga computers.
Tracker modules are a way to compose using a set of samples as source.
Playing the composition is done by reading a table which has the info of
what is played by which sample.
To realize simultaneous sounds one can read more 'channels' at the same time.
The total score is divided into 'patterns' (one table with all the
channel-data in it) with a default length of 64 steps (but changeable).
The tempo of the composition depends on the clock-speed of the read-out.

The table-system looks quite similar to the MIDI-system, but the advantage
i.m.o. lies in the fact that a tracker-module stores the complete information
in the file, including the instruments, while MIDI depends on the set (the 'bank') of
instruments one has on the pc-system (plus quite a poor clock-management).

INSTRUMENTS

For a Music-composer a trumpet is a trumpet.
For a Mux-composer each trumpet is per definition different from another trumpet.
For a Music-composer an orchestra is a set of instruments.
For a Mux-composer one instrument could be that total orchestra.

Strictly spoken the main reason why in old Music with a symphony
orchestra there were i.e. sections with 25 violins and three clarinets,
is a matter of volume-balance, so each section was loud enough to be heard, because
there was no electrical amplification possible.
But Mux-composers shouldn't forget, that it's not just a matter of power.
According to the micro-definitions each violin, although playing the same
note, has slightly different tuning, characteristics and timing, so a
combination of 25 violins gives a much 'richer' sound than just one
violin amplified 25 times, due to phase differences, etc.
On the other hand, in Mux this can be done if one wants to, but it takes
some work of course. If a suggestion works, no need to do more.

COMPOSITION

Any band can reproduce a Music-compo by Mahler or the Beatles because
there is a notation in a score with information about the used instruments, the notes,
the scale and the chord to be played.
Notation is a more western way, in f.e. India it could be transferred in a
master-pupil situation vocally by tradition.
This is one of the main reasons, that compositions with electronic devices
have suffered quite a tragedy, because they were kept in the Music-tree..
Ever heard of a reproduction of f.e. "Silver Apples of the Moon" by Morton Subotnick
by somebody else ?

It's definetely not so, that the machines do the work and there's a button called "make a nice piece".
Quality is still defined by craftmanship, only the working-fields have shifted into other areas.

--------------7/01
Music

If it's going on like this (as the past 20th century) Music will be drying up like the Aral-lake.
The material exhausted by being used over and over again, all variations
being tried, sounds and patterns repeated until getting used to them.
It's not that it's dying.
One can still get pleasure of great compositions, bands, the skill of Musicians, etc.
Of course one can, as you long as one's open to the sounds, getting it working and enjoy the experience.
Still, being open to it works too for 2000 years old Music of the Aboriginals..
But I'm afraid it will be something like the Eiffeltower soon (again, if it's going on like now).
The tower is still there and one can admire the technical skill
and be dazzled by the proportions and the impression, but one knows
it's not that contemporary anymore.
Other challenges are there to exploit.
The Music-tree has reached its frontiers.
It seems that nearly no more expansions can be made, because the
branches get too heavy, due to gravity.
The only thing that's left to do, is to connect with other sub-sub-branches
to make another combination. Let's say "classic-ambient-hip-hop-world-reggae".
From the outside, as an artform, this looks like that tree is going to be covered with a fuzzy cobweb....
=== 8/01
The basic of Mux maybe lies in the use of the sago-beetle by the Papuas.
You leave it, you play it, or you eat it.
=== 9/01
The notation of Mux with the purpose of giving someone else the opportunity to perform the composition
should be in a process-meaning form, not in a product-meaning way.
=== 30/01
Mux is not part of that big tree, Mux is a plant of its own.

FREQUENCIES :

what's the lowest frequency an ear can percept as a vibration ?
- a vibration defined as a repeated pattern of changes.
- in the low region this would mean : perception of rythmic patterns..
('tones' are about 20 Hz, but that's not the real frontier for perception)
- the perception depends on the limits of a rythmic prediction of the mind..
- could one tap the beat ?

since the essence of frequency lies in the 'octaves' as being the double,
the main range tends to be more specific from the common 20-20kHz range..
it's more likely to be 16-16384 Hz according to that field.
so including the rythmic range tend to start at 16 seconds ? : 0.0625 Hz..

SOLF�GE

Imagination.
As a student of a music academy should be able to determine a three note chord,
an electronic composer should be able to analyze a sound, and recognize the kind of modulation
that is taking place. Is it Ring Modulation or Frequency Modulation ?
If possible with presumption about the sources. The Carrier and the Modulator for example.

The data and the formula.

After the recognition, the analysis, the reconstruction can follow. How goes an explosion?
It hasn't got a tone or chord, so the Carrier has to be some noise generator.
An explosion can be short and strong, so that's Amplitude Modulation with a kind of sawtooth form.
(Such a form is called an 'envelope')
100% volume at the start with a very short fade out in a certain curve.
But in this case also the freq. bandwidth is fading out in a certain way. Filter Modulation.
The difference between 'bang', 'blast', 'pang', or 'boom'.

Reconstruction is one thing, construction is something else.
Electronic instruments have the potential to reproduce many, many existing sounds. In a form which offers enough suggestion to be used as an imitation.
Unfortunately for the past decennia this has been get stuck in that reconstruction phase.
This has lead to people who have studied to play the piano, to use a 'synthesizer keyboard',
and play a chord with the preset sound 'Brass 6'.
The choice of 200 known sounds instead of the possible unknown 2 billion.. What a waste of potential.

Modulation is control.
With synths those are the points to change the voltage by a controlled process.
In a digital system those points are more the number of variables in a formula.

Birds are masters in frequency and amplitude modulation. Blackbirds for example.
A pleasure to listen to.
Analyzing the sound 'Tweet' shows, that it starts at low frequency and stops at a much higher frequency.

How do you realize as electronic composer a noisy motorbike passing by from right to left ?
You could manipulate a sound sample of that bike to do so.
But synthesizing that sound offers much more control points of the nature of the engine and bike.

Frequency detection of a singer singing a 'B' is one thing.
Frequency detection of an explosion engine is something else..

Is a soft sound always far away ?