Sculpting Sounds with Computers: Music, Science, Technology

The author is active as both a composer and a research scientist. The article emphasizes the inspiration that music can bring to science and technology. This is first shown through a number of historical examples, from classical Greece to the computer age. Problems involving the use of the computer to calculate musical sounds are discussed. The author describes the esthetic incentives in his computer compositions and explains how they relate to his research work on sound synthesis, sound processing and auditory perception, including paradoxes and illusions. The conclusion contends that art and science bring about complementary kinds of knowledge.