Realtime Composition Library for MAX Computer/OS: Macintosh Year: 1992 ff. Author: Karlheinz Essl Manipulates: MIDI, audio Web: http://www.essl.at/works/rtc.html Implementation: MAX, C Paper: http://www.essl.at/bibliogr/struktgen.html Description: This library - a collection of patches for MAX (an interactive graphical programming environment for multimedia, music, and MIDI) - offers the possibility to experiment with a number of compositional techniques, such as serial procedures, permutations and controlled randomness. Most of these objects are geared towards straightforward processing of data. By using these specialized objects together in a patch, programming becomes much more clear and easy. Many functions that are often useful in algorithmic composition are provided with this library - therefore the composer could concentrate rather on the composition than the programming aspects. The Real Time Composition Library (RTC-lib) was developed during my extensive work on Lexikon-Sonate (1992 ff.), an interactive realtime composition for computer-controlled MIDI-piano. Regardless the fact that it was conceived for a concrete project it became more and more obvious that its functionalities are open and generic enough to be used by other composers in different compositional contexts. Although - from the theoretical point of view - based on paradigms which have been extracted from serial thinking - and its further developments until nowadays it does not force towards a certain aesthetic, but provides a programming environment for testing and developing musical strategies. Please note that "serial" has here another connotation than it normally has (especially in the US): "serial" here refers to a certain way of musical thinking rather then dodecaphonic techniques, which have been abandoned by the serial theory itself (cf. Gottfried Michael Koenig and Karlheinz Stockhausen).

Back