Curtis Roads
Flicker Tone Pulse (Electronic Music 2001-2016)
A prolific composer, performer, and author, Curtis Roads says he “pursues research in the interdisciplinary territory spanning music and technology.” He was Editor and Associate Editor of Computer Music Journal (The MIT Press) from 1978 to 2000, co-founded the International Computer Music Association in 1979, and was a pioneer in the development of granular synthesis. Roads developed the Creatophone, a system for spatial projection of sound in concert, as well as the Creatovox, an expressive new…
Clang-Tint Modulude
Last copies. Edition of 250 copies. Curtis Roads (° 1951) is a sound artist and composer and researcher in electronic music composition. Curtis Roads creates, teaches, and pursues research in the interdisciplinary territory spanning music and sound technology. He was Editor and Associate Editor of Computer Music Journal (The MIT Press) from 1978 to 2000, and cofounded the International Computer Music Association (ICMA) in 1979. A researcher at MIT (1980-1986), he also worked in the computer s…
Microsound
Below the level of the musical note lies the realm of microsound, of sound particles lasting less than one-tenth of a second. Recent technological advances allow us to probe and manipulate these pinpoints of sound, dissolving the traditional building blocks of music—notes and their intervals—into a more fluid and supple medium. The sensations of point, pulse (series of points), line (tone), and surface (texture) emerge as particle density increases. Sounds coalesce, evaporate, and mutate into ot…
Point Line Cloud
P028X is the reissue of the seminal Point Line Cloud album by Curtis Roads, 15 years after its original publication on Asphodel. Each piece here revels in the microscopic level of sound that Roads discusses in his book Microsound. He devises rich textures by exploring relationships between tiny sonic shards, juxtaposed, layered and manipulated on the minutest of timescales. If this all sounds terse and scientific, you're right, and wrong, as Roads is equally competent in the theoretical and arti…