This paper explores the differences in the design and performance of acoustic and new digital musical instruments, arguing that with the latter there is an increased encapsulation of musical theory. The point of departure is the phenomenology of musical instruments, which leads to the exploration of designed artefacts as extensions of human cognition -as scaffolding onto which we delegate parts of our cognitive processes. The paper succinctly emphasises the pronounced epistemic dimension of digital instruments when compared to acoustic instruments. Through the analysis of material epistemologies it is possible to describe the digital instrument as an epistemic tool: a designed tool with such a high degree of symbolic pertinence that it becomes a system of knowledge and thinking in its own terms. In conclusion, the paper rounds up the phenomenological and epistemological arguments, and points at issues in the design of digital musical instruments that are germane due to their strong aesthetic implications for musical culture.

Currently, a musician working with digital technology is faced with a panoply of musical tools that can be roughly characterized by a split between ready-made music production software on the one hand, and audio-programming environments such as SuperCollider, CSound, Pure Data, Max/MSP, ChucK, or Audiomulch (to name but a few) on the other. Problems with the former lie in the conceptual and compositional constraints imposed upon users by software tools that clearly define the scope of available musical expressions. It is for this reason that many musicians, determined to fight the fossilization of music into stylistic boxes, often choose to work with programming environments that allow for more extensive experimentation. However, problems here include the practically infinite expressive scope of the environment, sometimes resulting in a creative paralysis or in the frequent symptom of a musician-turned-engineer. Consequently, a common strategy can be detected, defined here as that of designing constraints, where the instrument designer, the composer, or the performer (a distinction often irrelevant in these systems; see Drummond 2009) devises a relatively high-level system of constraints, encapsulating a defined space for potential expression, whether of compositional or gestural nature.This article engages with this situation by exploring the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) concepts of affordances, constraints, and mapping. We examine how computational systems of musical expression always involve the establishment of a particular stratum that provides certain affordances to the musician, while concurrently posing important constraints. The article studies how constraints can serve as sources for creative explorations. For this purpose, three systems are analyzed: the mLog, Phalanger, and the ixi lang. All these systems are instantiations that proscribe complexity in favor

Abstract:After an eventful decade of live-coding activities, this article seeks to explore the practice with the aim of situating it in the history of contemporary arts and music. The article introduces several key points of investigation in live-coding research and discusses some examples of how live-coding practitioners engage with these points in their system design and performances. In light of the extremely diverse manifestations of live-coding activities, the problem of defining the practice is discussed, and the question is raised whether live coding is actually necessary as an independent category.

The author discusses live coding as a new path in the evolution of the musical score. Live-coding practice accentuates the score, and whilst it is the perfect vehicle for the performance of algorithmic music it also transforms the compositional process itself into a live event. As a continuation of 20th-century artistic developments of the musical score, live-coding systems often embrace graphical elements and language syntaxes foreign to standard programming languages. The author presents live coding as a highly technologized artistic practice, shedding light on how non-linearity, play and generativity will become prominent in future creative media productions.

Gaining a comprehensive understanding and overview of new musical technologies is fraught with difficulties. They are made of digital materials of such diverse origins and nature, that they do not fit comfortably into traditional organological classifications. This article traces the history of musical instrument classifications relevant to the understanding of new digital instruments, and proposes an alternative method to the centuries-old tree-structure of downwards divisions. The proposed musical organics is a multidimensional, heterarchical, and organic approach to the analysis and classification of both traditional and new musical instruments that suits the rhizomatic nature of their material design and technical origins. Outlines of a hypothetical organological informatics retrieval system are also presented.