Curtis Roads

Curtis Roads (born May 9, 1951 in Cleveland, Ohio^[1]) is a composer, author and computer programmer. He composes electronic and electroacoustic music, specializing in granular and pulsar synthesis.

Career and music

Roads studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts and the University of California, San Diego. He is chair of the Department of Media Arts and Technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.^[2] He has previously taught at the University of Naples^[2] "Federico II", Harvard University,^[2] Oberlin Conservatory, Les Ateliers UPIC (now CCMIX, Center for the Composition of Music Iannis Xenakis),^[2] and the University of Paris^[2] VIII.

He co-founded the International Computer Music Association in 1980 and edited the Computer Music Journal from 1978–2000.^[2] He has created software including PulsarGenerator and the Creatovox, both with Alberto de Campo.

Roads is the first person to implement granular sound processing in the digital domain.

Since 2004, he has been researching a new method of sound analysis called atomic decompositions, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF).^[2]

The first movement of his composition Clang-Tint, "Purity", uses intervals from the Bohlen–Pierce scale.^[3]

Publications

• Roads, Curtis (2015). Composing Electronic Music. Oxford University Press.
• Roads, Curtis (2001). Microsound. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-18215-7
• Roads, Curtis (1996). The Computer Music Tutorial. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-68082-3
• Roads, Curtis (1997). Musical Signal Processing. Routledge. ISBN 90-265-1483-2
• Roads, Curtis and Strawn, John, eds (1987). Foundations of Computer Music. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-68051-3

Compositions

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

References

External links

• Wired.com article by Eliot Van Buskirk Hear Curtis Roads’ Subatomic Pop Symphonies (May 5 2008), accessed 16 February 2010
• moderecords.com profile
• Asphodel artist page

Computer music
People	Marc Battier Richard Boulanger David Cope John Chowning Giuseppe di Giugno Charles Dodge Gottfried Michael Koenig Paul Lansky Max Mathews Miller Puckette Roger Reynolds Jean-Claude Risset Curtis Roads Laurie Spiegel The Hub Trimpin Barry Vercoe Iannis Xenakis
Programs and instruments	ChucK Cmix Csound HMSL Kyma Max/MSP MIDI controller Pure Data Music Mouse MUSIC-N Radiodrum SuperCollider UPIC
Places	Bell Labs CCRMA CEMAMu Computer Music Center at Columbia IRCAM Princeton Sound Lab Oberlin TIMARA Labs
Techniques	Algorithmic composition Sound synthesis
Compositions	Illiac Suite Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco