If a music major and a computer science major were to go out on a date where would they go?
Besides the occasional program using the sonata form, or a musical piece based on the Fibonacci sequence, what could they possibly find in common besides a vast resource of incompatible jargon?
The answer to the second question lies simply within the realm of live electro-acoustic music, the use of technology to create sound within the context of a live performance.
The answer to the first question would be to the Outpost Performance Space on Yale Boulevard between Central Avenue and Lead Avenue this Saturday at 8 p.m. to see Carl Stone, one of the electro-acoustic music world's shining stars.
Carl Stone is one of the pioneers of live computer music and has been hailed by the Village Voice as "the king of sampling." Snagging musical phrases from artists as diverse as Aqua and Schubert, Stone creates sonic worlds that are at times familiar and at other times completely alien. The individual bits may be classics, but they are woven together to create something completely new and surprising, revealing other worlds hidden deep within the familiar.
Though he began his work with sampling at roughly the same time that Grandmaster Flash was perfecting the art of "turntableism," Stone wasn't directly aware or influenced by hip hop in the formative years of the development of his technique.
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He is from a purely academic/high-art context and it is interesting to see the use of the same techniques sprouting up in such divergent aesthetic fields at roughly the same time. Nowadays, instead of turntables and a large rack filled with processors you can find Stone performing with a simple and powerful Mac G3 laptop computer.
"I've always admired a trumpet player, the guy who gets the call at five o'clock and hears he's got this gig, and is heading out to the airport at 5:05 with his instrument," Stone said in an interview available on the Cycling '74 record label at www.cycling74.com.
"I've always wanted to do that and now it's a reality because all I really need to take is my Powerbook and a change of underwear," Stone said.
Born in Los Angeles, Stone now divides his time between San Francisco and Japan. He studied electro-music composition at the California Institute of the Arts with Morton Subotnick and James Tenney and has composed within the genre almost exclusively since 1972.
Recordings of Stone's music have been released on New Albion, CBS Sony, Toshiba-EMI and various other labels. Numerous theater directors and choreographers including Hiroshi Koike, Akira Kasai, Bill T. Jones and Ping Chong have used commissions of his pre-existing work.
"I very rarely start out with a fixed idea that I wish to realize, but rather the act of composing for me involves a considerable amount of simple play by using materials and processes which I construct myself," Stone said. "The process of play reveals something about sound and material and the sources that I1m using which, in turn, then, realizes something about form and content and so on. Eventually, this becomes a piece of music."
So what will our mismatched couple do after being wowed by an evening of Stone's work? The computer science major can go up to Stone and make fun of Microsoft's programming bugs in every Windows platform, and in the same breath the music major can analyze the long-range structure of the palindrome as a model for western tonal harmony.
It's a win-win evening.
