In 1976, Suzanne Ciani reported back to the USA’s National Endowment for the Arts with a report on her compositions, in the form of a modular cookbook. Now you can read her notes and follow along using entirely free software, complete with sound examples.
I love overusing the cookbook metaphor, maybe just because food is the one thing I love more than synthesis. But worth copying Ciani’s note here, as it reflects on why “cooking” every day is such a good idea:
In cooking, we take many fundamental ingredients and combine them in different ways and amounts and produce endless creations. A little randomness here, a pinch of FM there, a mixing together of voltages and gestures. Voila! A musical souffle! In quadraphonic! Cooking needs to be done every day and it never turns out the same. That’s the fun.
And just like that, that quote got added to a slide on half the people in the world doing synth workshops! (Do it! I agree! Bring snacks for your students, while discussing food!)
The original document was typewritten. The new digital edition, totally free to browse online, includes new interactive features — and crucially, you don’t need your own Buchla hardware system:
- Audio examples from Suzanne Ciani herself
- Examples with equivalents in VCV Rack
- Updated visuals from the original diagrams (with zooming/scrolling)
- Interactive musical illustrations/scores with audio playback
They added a great interview with Suzanne, too, talking about her desires at the time and rebelling against the musical establishment. That part I’d heard — heh, many of us have been there with academic composition — but I was struck by this quote: “Yes, it was very lonely to speak a language that no one else was speaking.”
I expect that loneliness has passed, at least!
Going through the examples, there are terrific approaches to creating pitch rows in the sequencer, gates and modulation, “bowed” envelopes, spatial ideas, and other melodic-rhythmic approaches. It’s not a how-to, per se; it has a particular compositional perspective. So you can try stuff out, get some insights, and even rebel a little with your own musical language, too, if you so desire.
The VCV Rack translations are tucked into the videos. It’s great seeing that full rig, but you can also pretty easily reconstruct these directly in Rack or other modular rigs in hardware or software on your own from the original diagrams.
The full version is online on ECHO, via Belgium’s Orpheus Instituut, with the article contributed by Pierre Collard and Juan Parra Cancino. (ECHO is an initiative of the MTT (Music, Thought and Technology) research group at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent. What happened to the NEA? Belgium, man!)
For just one dollar(!), you can buy the original, typewritten document, too, via the composer’s official site:
Suzanne Ciani’s Report to National Endowment
Seems it’s worth grabbing both, really — the hand-drawn illustrations hold their own personality and insights.
I never saw a story I didn’t want to over-stuff, so let’s add some more Suzanne inspiration!
Deep-listening her 1975 concerts is a great place to start:
Or peer in on a newer performance (spatialized)!
She’s talked about her practice, as well:
Or zoom in on the 248 MARF (Multiple Arbitrary Function Generator):
Of course, who could forget her on 3-2-1 Contact —
— or scoring pinball machines?