Computers & the Expanding Compositional Frontier, Part II: Christopher Ariza and Eric Lyon

Computers & the Expanding Compositional Frontier, Part II: Christopher Ariza and Eric Lyon

Eric Lyon Photo by Paul Herman Reller Last month, I shared my enthusiasm for Nick Didkovsky’s fusion of computer programming and composition. This month, I continue my explorations with the work of two other composer/programmers, a generation apart. Reviewing the activities of the latest SEAMUS conference, I was lucky enough to read about the work… Read more »

Written By

Jenny Undercofler


Eric Lyon
Photo by Paul Herman Reller

Last month, I shared my enthusiasm for Nick Didkovsky’s fusion of computer programming and composition. This month, I continue my explorations with the work of two other composer/programmers, a generation apart. Reviewing the activities of the latest SEAMUS conference, I was lucky enough to read about the work of Eric Lyon, Assistant Professor of Music at Dartmouth College, and Christopher Ariza, a second-year PhD student at NYU. Both men presented papers at a session on March 2, 2001 entitled “Systems for Composition.” Ariza has developed a program called Athena that is both a powerful set class utility and an algorithmic front-end to the popular Csound acoustic compiler. Lyon has developed a program called Mushroom that puts input sounds through strings of randomly sequenced processors.

There are similarities between the programs of Ariza, Lyon, and Didkovsky. All three composers assigned the computer some “dirty work” that would otherwise take hours. Ariza has the computer search for complicated relationships between set classes, for instance. Didkovsky, Ariza, and Lyon all use the computer to create music samples based on certain specifications. Depending on what they want in a particular composition, they may give the computer very specific parameters, or leave the computer to create random and interesting results, John Cage-style. Most importantly, perhaps, all three composers have written programs that can be easily shared and customized. Thanks to the Internet, two of the three programs (JMSL and Athena) can be downloaded in standalone versions; two of the three can also be accessed directly on the web (JMSL and Mushroom). All three programs can personalized, thanks to their object-oriented design.

For more information on Christopher Ariza’s Athena, click here.

For more information on Eric Lyon’s Mushroom, click here.