The OM composer's book. Vol. 1

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The Om Composer's Book.1

This book is a collection of essays, by various composers, each providing a concrete example in « Computer-Aided Composition » (CAC). Symbolic computation techniques, data structures and discrete mathematics algorithms are all discussed through the presentations of concrete musical works, where the accent is put on the use of CAC in modelling compositions and dealing with music formal structures.

Even though it brings together different composers and hence different musical styles, the common denominator in these texts is the use of the OpenMusic environment.

OpenMusic (OM) is a visual programming language for CAC, designed and developed at Ircam. In addition to being a compositional instrument, OpenMusic is the fruit of years of research and experimentation in computer science and musical composition, which this book intends to sum up and communicate. However, rather than a presentation of abstract theoretical aspects, it provides composers' points of views.

The book deals with both the musical and computer domains, and is intended for professional consultation, as well as students and instructors. On the musical level, it constitutes a reference for various activities : composition, analysis and musicology in general. Nevertheless, it may also allow the reader to assess the relevance of various computer science topics (e.g. constraint techniques, functional programming, object-oriented programming, and visual programming) through their application in musical fields. Although a great number of documents on computer applications are available, real life studies on the subject such as the ones presented in this book are much rare.