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 and electroacoustic music, specializing in

granular Granularity (also called graininess) is the degree to which a material or system is composed of distinction (philosophy), distinguishable pieces, granular material, "granules" or grain, "grains" (metaphorically). It can either refer to the exten ...

and pulsar synthesis.

Career and music

Born in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–United States border, Canada–U.S. maritime border ...

, Roads studied composition at the

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

and the

University of California San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

. 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 university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...

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

University of Naples The University of Naples Federico II (; , ) is a public university, public research university in Naples, Campania, Italy. Established in 1224 and named after its founder, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, it is the oldest public, s ...

"Federico II",

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

Oberlin Conservatory The Oberlin Conservatory of Music is a private music conservatory of Oberlin College, a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio. It was founded in 1865 and is the second oldest conservatory and oldest continually operating conservatory in ...

, 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; , ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde composer, music theorist, architect, performance director and enginee ...

), and the

University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

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. 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 musical tuning, tuning and scale (music), scale, first described in the 1970s, that offers an alternative to the octave-repeating scales typical in Classical music, Western and other musics, spec ...

."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 2010

Asphodel artist page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Roads, Curtis 20th-century American classical composers American male classical composers 21st-century American classical composers Living people University of California, San Diego alumni Harvard University faculty University of California, Santa Barbara faculty Oberlin College faculty 1951 births 20th-century American male musicians 21st-century American male musicians