Friday, July 25, 2003

By Andrew Druckenbrod, Post-Gazette Classical Music Critic

The future of music is in Roger Dannenberg's hands. No, the Squirrel Hill composer isn't sitting in judgment, he is sitting in a computer music laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, where his hands work with the technology that will run and even create music for years to come.

	Rudolfo Villela dances as part of "Watercourse Way," staged by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. (Matt Freed, Post-Gazette) Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble Where & When: Hazlett Theater, North Side; 7 p.m. Saturday.. Tickets: $8-$16. 412-889-7231.

Dannenberg's specialty is finding harmony between computers and performers in a live setting, even if the musicians improvise. "When you have a computer and a human working together, you can create music that neither could make by themselves," says the soft-spoken Dannenberg, 48. "I can program the computer to make a lot of compositional decisions -- [such as having] notes of a soloist repeated in a certain way -- I could not rely on a performer to make."

Dannenberg has been on CMU's faculty since shortly after getting his Ph.D. in computer science there in 1982. Although his dissertation was in operating systems, the field of computer music turned out to be the perfect fit for Dannenberg, an avid trumpeter who plays in Roger Humphries Big Band and a composer who has had multiple commissions. "There is a scientific side where you discover new knowledge and a music side where you create new art. I do both."

As a researcher, he has been successful with numerous projects in computer/musician interactivity. The most notable is an advanced accompaniment program called SmartMusic that can follow a performer in real-time, changing tempo as needed. "The human performer can play expressively" with the computer program quickly analyzing past notes to judge the playing. "The instant you play a note early, it can speed up," Dannenberg says. "It is good enough that a lot of students enjoy practicing with it."

The next frontier for this pioneer is making computer accompaniment sound better. "There is a false notion in computer science that if you can synthesize one note, you can string them together and make a phrase," he says. "But you need to synthesize phrases; notes are not independent of each other. That is why much computer or electronic music sounds artificial."

Dannenberg is working on a trumpet synthesizer that will do just that, but no matter how representative it gets, he is adamant about keeping performers. "The technology is coming, not so much from me, that is going to make it possible to electronically re-create the sounds of orchestras," he says. "I don't think it's a good thing; it is something that society and musicians are going to have to reckon with. We have machines that can lift things and you could argue you don't need to use your muscles as much, but that would be terrible."

Composer and computer scientist Roger Dannenberg. (Matt Freed, Post-Gazette)

As a composer, he is busy putting his theories into practice. The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, on whose board he sits, premieres his new work, "The Watercourse Way," this weekend. This collaboration with visual artist Barbara Bernstein, robotics researcher Garth Zeglin of CMU and software developer Tom Neuendorffer is anything but ordinary. It's scored for a sextet of PNME musicians, a dancer (all wearing LED lights) and a pool.

Yes, the pool of water is an instrument: "It's 12 by 5 feet, very shallow with a silver bottom. Light is reflected thorough the pool back up to a screen. When the water moves and makes patterns of light on the screen the computer translates them into music [through] spectral modulation. It is a textural thing, almost like a drone string on a sitar."

The musicians' playing also will be processed in this one-movement piece whose title is the literal translation of "Tao Te Ching." One effect is that the ambiance-building notes of the opening measures are recorded in a digital loop immediately replayed, adding to the sound as the musicians play on. "[This creates] a big orchestral sound out of a chamber orchestra," he says.

Musically, Dannenberg strives for a middle ground between the sparseness of some composers without the harshness of others. His output places a "greater emphasis on texture and sound as opposed to melody, but it's not devoid of melody," he says. "I am not out to torture people. I like exploring the sound computers can generate."