Computer musicians fiddle with sampled sounds and write software, but theirs is often a lonely pursuit. Now a few at the vanguard are tapping the musical potential of networked laptop computers. In April, an ensemble called the Princeton Laptop Orchestra will hold its first concert – and solemnly perform a piece inspired by the social call-and-response patterns of swamp frogs.
Fifteen student musicians will sit atop pillows before their laptop-instruments, awaiting their conductor’s signals, which will arrive via instant messages or pop-ups. Then they’ll tap into all sorts of presampled, live, and computer-generated sounds (such as sampled drumbeats, or their own voices reciting the alphabet) and manipulate them with gizmos like glove-mounted accelerometers. Like the frogs, who reply to one another with different sorts of croakings, the musicians will reply to one another with different noises. Tod Machover, the avant-garde musical inventor and composer at MIT’s Media Lab, calls the orchestra “a cooler, better way to teach a new music environment than any I’ve heard of.”
The orchestra’s cocreator, Perry Cook, a Princeton professor of computer science and music, acknowledges that the computers haven’t made performing easier or cheaper; it takes 40 minutes just to set up the wireless network that synchronizes the expensive laptops. So traditional musicians need not see the technology as a threat; if you wanted to play a Beethoven symphony, “it’d be much cheaper to use a traditional orchestra” than the laptop version, Cook says. For now, the ensemble’s aspirations are modest: to survive the semester and become a Princeton fixture.
Keep Reading
Most Popular

Why China is still obsessed with disinfecting everything
Most public health bodies dealing with covid have long since moved on from the idea of surface transmission. China’s didn’t—and that helps it control the narrative about the disease’s origins and danger.

These materials were meant to revolutionize the solar industry. Why hasn’t it happened?
Perovskites are promising, but real-world conditions have held them back.

Anti-aging drugs are being tested as a way to treat covid
Drugs that rejuvenate our immune systems and make us biologically younger could help protect us from the disease’s worst effects.

A quick guide to the most important AI law you’ve never heard of
The European Union is planning new legislation aimed at curbing the worst harms associated with artificial intelligence.
Stay connected

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.