Eduardo Reck Miranda (born 1963) is a Brazilian composer of chamber and electro-acoustic music. His interests in science and music are evenly balanced.

He studied in Brazil, England, Scotland and France and is currently Professor in Computer Music and Head of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR) at the University of Plymouth, Devon, England. His music has been played in many countries, and his research in the field of human-machine interfaces is known globally.

Interviewing Eduardo Miranda posed one obvious problem for me. It is more than possible that I may be the most technophobic musician still alive on this planet. I’m an utter dunce when it comes to science, and only use it in my own music when someone else operates it. How, then, was I supposed to conduct an intelligent interview with one of the world’s big noises in the field of interplay between music and science?

The answer, happily, lie in the problem itself – as good answers often do. Rather than pretend to approach Eduardo as a peer, I adopted the pose of the interested, intelligent layman. In fact, no adopting was required. That is precisely what I am – interested, hopefully a little intelligent, but the word layman doesn’t begin to describe my scientific and technological ignorance.

Knowing Eduardo as a colleague at the University of Plymouth, however, I am aware that – despite being comfortable in a world of technical jargon inaccessible to me – he is essentially a humanist, happy to discuss his ideas at whatever level is appropriate. His answers to my questions are models of clear, well-thought out, sympathetic communication. For the record, I have not edited them in any way.

I have added lists of his major published works, either as author or editor, and recorded music. He has also written single chapters in anthologies, many conference papers, and many pieces of music that are not yet available as recordings.

Q. Can you explain for non-musicians and non-scientists what, in the broadest possible terms, you mean by Cellular Automata Music?

A. Cellular Automata, or CA, are generally defined as mathematical tools to model natural phenomena on computers, with the aim of studying such phenomena by means of simulations. CA have been used to develop simulations in a variety of fields, ranging from economics and social sciences, to biology and ecology.

For instance, it is possible to use CA to simulate the behaviour of a colony of ants, where each individual ant is characterized by a set of variables representing certain traits. Then, the computer is programmed with a set of rules that govern how the ants interact with one another and with the environment.

In practice, the rules govern how the variables change their values as a simulation progresses. What is interesting here is that it is possible to simulate the collective behaviour of the whole colony by programming how the ants interact with each other. That is, there is no overarching rule determining how the colony behaves. Rather, the collective behaviour emerges from the interactions of individuals.

Cellular Automata Music is music generated with CA models. In my case, I invented a way to represent music in terms of CA patterns, which makes it possible to generate music from the behaviour of CA. I do not use CA to model “natural” musical phenomena as such. Rather I use CA to generate patterns that are rendered into music. For instance, I could use a simulation of ants to make music with, provided the simulation produces patterns that sound musical to me.
 
Q. Without doubt some very complex and subtle processes are at work behind the music, to provide its architecture so to speak. In terms of listening to such music, however, do you consider it possible for a listener to actually hear these processes - say in the way the workings of thematic development can be heard in more conventional music? Or if not, is there a preferred way of listening?

A. Well, I do not think it is necessary to hear such processes to appreciate a piece. Composers of all times have developed a great variety of techniques to compose music, which very seldom have been made accessible to their audience. Indeed, I know of many people who do not have a clue what a fugue is about and yet find fugues very beautiful to listen to. There is good evidence from research into the neurosciences that our brain is clever enough to forge strategies to listen to pieces of music, which do not necessarily need to match the ways in which composers have designed them. This is why I find music so interesting. However, this is not to say that it is not important to know about, or even be able to follow, the compositional processes behind a piece. Knowing what is going on behind the scenes can be intellectually stimulating and may enhance the listening experience.
 
Q. Very many years ago Milton Babbitt argued that what he called "advanced" or "serious" music was a kind of research, which should have its place in universities the same as highly specialized science, medicine or any other subject. In arguing this he answered those critics of new, experimental or avant garde music who claimed that these musics were somewhat remote from the majority of people. Do you support this view, or do you have a different take on it?

A. Ye, I do have a different take on this.  I do not think that avant garde music is necessarily doomed to be remote from the majority of people. There are audiences for all sorts of musics nowadays and I think there is a growing interest in contemporary art music.

I would say that there are two separate but interconnected issues in your question. One is with to do with academic research into music and the other is whether or not specific musicians make music that particular groups of people enjoy listening to. 

Research into music addresses a great variety of issues, ranging from musicology to inventing new approaches to compose music.  There is nothing wrong with highly specialist academic research into music; music as any other subject, like biology or physics, needs to be studied seriously. As a composer myself, I am primarily interested in research into inventing approaches to composition using new technologies.

Obviously music is a cultural phenomenon in the sense that the great majority of people tend to make and/or enjoy music that conforms to a number of cultural conventions. Not surprisingly, composers who are constantly exploring new ways to make music will hardly ever appeal to a greater audience.

Much of this music is experimental and violates cultural conventions. It is only natural that people may find experimental music difficult to listen to. If I go to the theatre in Moscow to see a play by Chekhov in Russian, I would not fully enjoy it because I do not speak any Russian. But some aspects of a theatre performance may look familiar and so I may follow some aspects of it. 

The bottom line is the more familiar you are with certain types of cultural events the more you are likely to enjoy it.

Our musical culture is not static, but an evolving dynamic phenomenon, which is changing all the time to accommodate novel conventions and approaches. But cultural evolution takes time to occur and there are plenty of cases in the history of Western art music where composers have not lived long enough to see their approaches make their way into the mainstream.

I often cite the composer Edgar Varèse to illustrate this. His piece Déserts, for orchestra and electronically synthesized sounds, had it first performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élisées, Paris, in 1954. The audience was very hostile. The piece provoked a riot in the theatre. One critic even wrote that he wanted to send Varèse to the electric chair.

Yet, less than two decades later Varèse’s style had made its way into film music and nobody complained. Fos instance, the soundtrack of the film Planet of the Apes released in 1968, composed by Jerry Goldsmith, sounded very much like Varèse’s Déserts. And indeed, Déserts is now a well-accepted piece in the mainstream art music repertoire. It has recently been featured in the highly popular BBC Proms festival in London with much enjoyment from the audience.

Music that sounds weird or too complicated today might constitute the main stream tomorrow. But there are certain laws that cannot be violated because of the very nature of our biology. And composers should be aware of this. As a crude example, it is unlikely that people will ever enjoy music using sounds that can be heard only by bats or dogs. Our ears were not made for that.
 
Q. Could you give some account of the genesis of a composition for you? How does it start? Where does the idea come from? What are the first moves?

A. The genesis of a composition varies from piece to piece for me. This depends as to whether I use a computer or not. I might use a computer for different purposes and at different stages of a composition.

I would often start by programming the computer to generate basic raw musical materials for a piece; such as phrases, rhythms, sections, etc. I rarely use the computer to generate fully-fledged pieces. Rather, I use the computer to generate basic materials to compose with. Sometimes I have a rough idea of how I would like the final piece to be but I do not tend to impose too many limitations from the outset. I often make compositional decisions based on the materials I am working with. 

There is nothing revolutionary with this approach to composition. I know of many composers who seat on the piano and improvise musical melodies, rhythms, sections, etc., some of which are picked and honed into compositions. The difference in my case is that the computer is programmed to create compositional seeds that I would probably not have created by improvising on the piano myself. I am very much aware that the more musicians improvise, the more they tend to repeat their own clichés. In many ways the computer helps me to avoid this vicious circle.
 
Q. You probably get asked this rather too often, but how do you see the science of music or musical science developing in the near future? Does it make live music redundant? Alternatively, do the two musical dimensions - live and computerized - need one another, or work together particularly well?

A. I do not see computer technology superseding musician, performers and so on. The notion that computers/robots will take over the world and make people redundant, slaves, etc. is science fiction and I find such stories rather unimaginative. Computer technology is here to enhance humanity and not to supersede it.

Of course, as with anything, there are good and bad uses of technology and we have to be able to discern this. Indeed the computer is increasingly being able to perform tasks that may emulate humans very well: it can compose Mozart-like sonatas or interesting jazz, and can also perform music expressively on synthesisers quite convincingly. But I would not bother to question whether this is a replacement of or an addition to human musicianship; it is neither.

Photography did not replace painting; news on the radio did not replace the printed press; cinema did not replace theatre; electronic media did not replace books; and so on. Why should one question the future of music technology? Let us celebrate it instead!

Sam Richards

Published books of Eduardo Reck Miranda
Miranda, Eduardo Reck. (1998). Computer Sound Synthesis for the Electronic Musician. Focal Press, publisher. ISBN 0-240-51517-X
Miranda, Eduardo Reck, editor. (1999). Música y Nuevas Tecnologias: Perspectivas para le Siglo XXI. Publisher: L’Angelot. ISBN
Miranda, Eduardo Reck, editor. (2000). Readings in Music and Artificial Intelligence. Publisher: Routledge. ISBN 90-5755-094-6
Miranda, Eduardo. (2001). Composing Music with Computers. Publisher: Focal Press. ISBN 0-240-51567-6
Miranda, Eduardo. (2002). Computer Sound Design: Synthesis Techniques and Programming. Publisher: Focal Press. Second edition. ISBN 0-240-51693-1
Miranda, Eduardo Reck, and Wanderley, Marcelo. (2006). New Digital Musical Instruments: Control And Interaction Beyond the Keyboard. Publisher: A-R Editions, Inc. ISBN 0-89579-585-X

Discography
Miranda, Eduardo Reck. (1995). Olivine Trees. (Simpósio Brasileiro de Computação e Música: NUCOM01).
Miranda, Eduardo Reck. (1996). Goma Arábica. (Sociedade Brasileira de Música Eletroacústica: SBME01).
Miranda, Eduardo Reck. (1998). Electroacoustic Samba X. (OOdiscs: 45).
Miranda, Eduardo Reck. (1998). Requiem per una veu perduda. (Organised Sound: 3/3).
Miranda, Eduardo Reck. (1999). Electroacoustic Sambas II-III. (IMEB/UNESCO/CIME: LDC 278068/69).
Miranda, Eduardo Reck. (2000). Electroacoustic Samba I. (Leonardo Music Journal: 10).
Miranda, Eduardo Reck (composer). (2004). Mother Tongue. Audio CD. Label: Sargasso Records. ASIN: B00029LO8G