HCI and the Schillinger System of Music Composition
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Some of you might have wondered how to correctly pronounce Schillinger’s last name. Is the “-ger” at the end of it pronounced with a soft “g” sound, as in “giant,” or with a hard “g,” as in “gain”? I asked Mrs. Schillinger this question in 1996, and she said it always annoyed her when people used the soft “g” sound. She said it was with a hard “g.” Thus, it is “Schill-ing-ger,” as if you are growling at the end.
Thanks to Monty Ross for creating and posting these videos on YouTube. Roland introduced me to the Schillinger System, and was one of my most inspiring teachers.
I’m going to start by outlining the aspects of the system. For starters, I’m listing the table of contents; I’ll later break this down into separate sections with explanatory text discussing the meaning of his cryptic sounding terms. Hopefully I can provide some correlation of the techniques within the vocabulary and theoretical world of a classically trained musician.
Once this broad goal is accomplished, or perhaps as I go, I will consider some potential programming implementations of the techniques within the software musicians frequently use today.
The Schillinger System of Musical Composition
BOOK 1
Theory of RhythmChapter 1
Notation System
A. Graphing Music
B. Forms of Periodicity
Chapter 2
Interferences of Periodicities
A. Binary Synchronization
B. Grouping
Chapter 3
The Techniques of Grouping
Chapter 4
The Techniques of Fractioning Continue reading “Schillinger System Table of Contents”
The Schillinger System has fallen into disuse. Many musicians thoroughly trained in advanced contemporary music theory scoff at the technique, or else are scared off by the mathematical terminology. Many don’t know what it has to offer them.
The vast strides in musical software development during the last thirty years have yet to integrate the benefits of a system which had already systematized many of the musical processes that composers spend much of their time with.
The Schillinger system uses a graphical notation nearly identical with that of MIDI sequences, yet Schillinger didn’t have the advantage of a computer to implement his system, and most sequencer programmers don’t know what benefits it could offer them.
Theorists who discuss the system often are so intellectually entranced by analyses of classical works that they fail to consider its potential implementation in a contemporary setting.
I hope to begin to consider some of the potential uses of the system, and to see how the mathematical language could be made transparent to a musician.
Considerations of how to implement the Schillinger Technique lead to many questions.
What input and outputs relate to the materials of each chapter in his books?
How can the mathematical jargon be hidden from the musician, making it accessible to someone with traditional musical training? Are his uses of mathematical terms misleading or even incorrect?
Can his transformational processes be integrated into existing sequencers or music notation programs like Digital Performer, Cubase, Logic, Finale, and Sibelius?
Can they be applied to digital sound file DSP transformations, or only MIDI streams?
Can they be offered as Open Source software? Or will proprietary implementations be necessary?
What elements of a computer or musical interface would best serve the implementation of each process?
What aspects of computer interface design are most important in the development of such a system?
I’ve been frustrated that issues of Computer Human Interaction, or CHI, are almost completely ignored by the people teaching digital audio programming. So here begins an investigation into the issues in the field.