Curtis Roads (born May 9, 1951) is an American

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Def ...

, author and computer programmer. He composes

electronic Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic co ...

and electroacoustic music, specializing in

granular Granularity (also called graininess), the condition of existing in granules or grains, refers to the extent to which a material or system is composed of distinguishable pieces. It can either refer to the extent to which a larger entity is subd ...

and pulsar synthesis.

Career and music

Born in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S ...

, Roads studied composition at the

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...

and the

University of California San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

. He is former chair and current vice chair of the Media Arts and Technology Program at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

.MAT: Faculty and Researchers
", ''Mat.UCSB.edu''. He has previously taught at the

University of Naples The University of Naples Federico II ( it, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) is a public university in Naples, Italy. Founded in 1224, it is the oldest public non-sectarian university in the world, and is now organized into 26 depar ...

"Federico II",

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

Oberlin Conservatory The Oberlin Conservatory of Music is a private music conservatory in Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. It was founded in 1865 and is the second oldest conservatory and oldest continually operating conservatory in the United States. It is one o ...

, Les Ateliers UPIC (now CCMIX, Center for the Composition of Music

Iannis Xenakis Giannis Klearchou Xenakis (also spelled for professional purposes as Yannis or Iannis Xenakis; el, Γιάννης "Ιωάννης" Κλέαρχου Ξενάκης, ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde c ...

), and the

University of Paris , image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of Arms , latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis , motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin) , mottoeng = Here and a ...

VIII. He co-founded the International Computer Music Association in 1980 and edited the

Computer Music Journal ''Computer Music Journal'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers a wide range of topics related to digital audio signal processing and electroacoustic music. It is published on-line and in hard copy by MIT Press. The journal is accompani ...

from 1978–2000. He has created software including PulsarGenerator and the Creatovox, both with

Alberto de Campo Alberto is the Romance version of the Latinized form (''Albertus'') of Germanic ''Albert''. It is used in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. The diminutive forms are ''Albertito'' in Spain or ''Albertico'' in some parts of Latin America, Albertin ...

. Since 2004, he has been researching a new method of sound analysis called atomic decompositions, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The first movement of his composition ''Clang-Tint'', "Purity", uses intervals from the

Bohlen–Pierce scale The Bohlen–Pierce scale (BP scale) is a musical tuning and scale, first described in the 1970s, that offers an alternative to the octave-repeating scales typical in Western and other musics, specifically the equal-tempered diatonic scale. T ...

."Synthèse 96: The 26th International Festival of Electroacoustic Music", p.91. Michael Voyne Thrall. Computer Music Journal, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 90–92.

Publications

* Roads, Curtis (2015). ''Composing Electronic Music''. Oxford University Press. * Roads, Curtis (2001). '' Microsound''. Cambridge: MIT Press. * Roads, Curtis (1996)
''The Computer Music Tutorial''
MIT Press. * Roads, Curtis, Pope, Stephen Travis, Piccialli, Aldo and De Poli, Giovanni, eds (1997). ''Musical Signal Processing''. Routledge. * Roads, Curtis and Strawn, John, eds (1987). ''Foundations of Computer Music''. MIT Press.

Compositions

*''POINT LINE CLOUD'' (2005
@Asphodel(Excerpt @ youtube)
*''Half-life'' (1998–1999) *''Clang-Tint'' (1991–1994) *'' nscor'' (1980)

References

External links

Artist pageWired.com article by Eliot Van Buskirk ''Hear Curtis Roads’ Subatomic Pop Symphonies'' (May 5 2008), accessed 16 February 2010Asphodel artist page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Roads, Curtis 20th-century classical composers American male classical composers American classical composers 21st-century classical composers Living people University of California, San Diego alumni Harvard University faculty University of California, Santa Barbara faculty Oberlin College faculty 21st-century American composers 1951 births 20th-century American composers 20th-century American male musicians 21st-century American male musicians