About This Issue

In October 2001, Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA, hosted a symposium entitled "The Future of Music Software." The event's premise was that computer music languages (and related software) that have survived the test of time can provide lessons about the criteria for successful music software and hints about what directions such software might follow in the future. Accordingly, the roster of speakers at the symposium consisted of illustrious names in the development of computer music. These individuals are, in historical order of the listed software (not necessarily their earliest contributions): Max Mathews (the pioneer of digital sound synthesis for music and originator of the so-called "Music N" languages epitomized by Music V); Gareth Loy (key contributor to the CARL software suite from the Computer Audio Research Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego); Barry Vercoe (developer of Csound, the mostly widely promulgated Music N language); Miller Puckette (creator of Max, the graphical patching environment for real-time applications); David Zicarelli (developer of the commercial version of Max and its audio offshoot MSP); and James McCartney (author of the object-oriented synthesis language Super-Collider).

This issue of Computer Music Journal offers some fascinating glimpses into the thinking of these software developers. The first article, a lightly edited transcription of a panel discussion among all the speakers at the symposium, touches upon a variety of topics, some arising from audience questions. Among other subjects, the panelists talk about software development processes, intellectual property, the influence of a language on music composed with it, and, more generally, the historical impact of technological advances upon music. The remaining articles consist of substantially expanded and updated versions of most of the participants' individual presentations. These in-depth articles reflect on each author's own work in the context of the symposium's topic. Although they are fully informative when read in isolation, the articles also shed light on comments the authors made during the panel discussion, and vice versa. Finally, we present in this issue an article on similar themes by Carla Scaletti, the developer of the Kyma composition and synthesis software, who was invited to speak at the symposium but was unable to attend.

Our thanks go to Eric Lyon, the organizer of the Dartmouth symposium, for instigating and helping to coordinate this documentation of the participants' thinking, as well as for providing a raw transcript of the panel discussion and related material.

The reviews in this issue cover concerts of electroacoustic music, a book on algorithmic composition, many compact discs, and some recent music software. We suggest that interested readers check the Journal's editorial Web site at mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Computer-Music-Journal/Documents/reviews for additional reviews not published in the Journal itself. Published or not, reviews of events are often posted there in advance of the issue's publication. Following the Products section, we conclude with the program notes for this year's Computer Music Journal Sound Anthology compact disc, attached to the back cover of this issue. This CD, for which associate editor James Harley served as both curator and producer, contains compositions selected by Mr. Harley in conjunction with the theme of Volume 26, Number 1 (Spring 2002), "In Memoriam Iannis Xenakis," as well as sound examples to accompany other material published in Volume 26.

Front cover. Although rendered in a strange font and image-processed, these symbols represent actual program code written in one of the sound-synthesis languages described in this issue. (The first reader who correctly decodes the excerpt will receive four recent issues of the annual Computer Music Journal Sound Anthology CD. Contact cmj@mitpress.mit.edu.)

Back cover. A screen image showing Kyma's graphical user interface.