The Composers Desktop Project

A Composers' Viewpoint CDP members are deeply involved in the current huge shifts in music-making. As an organisation we place the emphasis on sound transformation in creative musical contexts. Our aim is to provide new computer tools for sound design, in which the emphasis is on a detailed and flexible access to the inner features of sounds. Our goal is to help composers work with sounds. To this end, numerous programs are semi-algorithmic in nature, such as the segmentation routines and the Texture Set, which shape whole multi-event passages of music – 'semi-algorithmic' in this context means ways to adjust both individual parameters and multiple events over time.) In other words, CDP is not just focused on 'DSP' functions (digital signal processing), nor on sequencing or audio editing, and not at all with sound synthesis: other software handles these things nicely. CDP focuses on transforming existing sounds (musique concrète) and how they might be shaped over time to create anything from a single complex sound or gesture, to an extended soundscape or composition. In doing this, we mainly adopt the composer's viewpoint and seek to create a mutually supportive environment in which practising composers can help each other, both in designing software tools and in using them effectively. We believe in and depend on the crucial importance of the composer's ability to hear music not only before it is written, but even before the means to produce it are available.