Students in a freshman seminar called the Princeton Laptop Orchestra — otherwise known as PLOrk — experimented with computer music performance and composition techniques in a special session Thursday. World-renowned tabla player Zakir Hussain's tabla rhythms provided a live input.
The seminar, taught by music professor Dan Trueman and computer science professor Perry Cook, explores the different sounds that can be created using computer science technology. The 15 students in the seminar compose and perform music on laptops connected to speakers, keyboards, tablets and other control devices.
Yesterday, Hussain visited the class to project his rhythms onto the computer network via several microphones, and students used the computer software on their laptops to modify and add to the live feed.
"It's really crazy how we're doing something that has not really been done before," said Ken Schwartz '09, a student in the seminar. "Our teachers are the actual pioneers of this technology."
After an initial tuning period, the students and Hussain were able to improvise together, producing a mix of intricate rhythms and computer-generated sounds. Kurtis Bahn, a composer, helped the students coordinate their sounds.
The seminar is "an extension of the work I have been doing for many years with Perry Cook ... exploring how computers and electronic sounds can be used in relatively conventional music-making scenarios," Trueman said in an email.
The students program the music in ChucK, a new language developed by Ge Wang GS, who plays an active role in teaching the course.
Most students in the class have had significant music experience, but are relatively new to the field of computer science.
"We get to be composers, performers, as well as computer programmers," said Anna Wittstruck '09, another student in the class.
The six-channel hemispherical speakers used by each student are a product of the work of Trueman and Cook, who spent many years developing a speaker that would most closely imitate the sounds of real instruments.
The students' homework assignments ask them to try out new techniques of composing and performing taught in class. "The homework we do in our dorms drives our roommates crazy, especially the one where we had to create drum machines using ChucK," Janet Kim '09 said.
"We are able to create new sounds that you can't create on real instruments," Wittstruck said. "I want to major in PLOrk."
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