The computer’s visual representation of sound has revolutionized the creation of sample-based music through the interface of the Digital Audio Workstation software (DAW). With the rise of DAW-based composition in popular music styles, many artists’ sole experience of musical creation is through the computer screen. I assert, the particular sonic visualizations of the DAW propagate certain assumptions about music, influencing aesthetics and adding new visually-based parameters to musical composition. For example, to many users, an increase in the complexity of the DAW’s visual representation of sound (and the corresponding graphical feedback when manipulated) seems to impart greater feelings of control, pleasure and mastery than the representations that offer less visual detail. Often, this optically influenced sense of enjoyment and agency encourages an aesthetic of increased compositional manipulation as well as a creative process that foregrounds free play and experimentation. An analysis of the influence of this type of visual interactivity will be furnished through the depiction of the interface concept of direct manipulation, as well as an examination of the online DAW communities of Reddit and futureproducers.com.
About the presenterIan Macchiusi
Ian Macchiusi is a drummer and teacher interested in the intersection of computer software with musical performance, improvisation and composition. He is currently working on his PhD. dissertation at York University examining the influence of the computer screen in software composed popular music.