Laurie Spiegel – Unseen Worlds (1991)

Country: United States

 

Tracklist

Thesis - Exploration And Intuition
Nine Improvisations Recorded, Edited And Elaborated As Digital Audio:
Three Sonic Spaces
1. I 01:36
2. II 03:22
3. III 05:53
4. Finding Voice 02:45
5. The Hollows 04:51
Two Archetypes
6. I Hall Of Mirrors 04:24
7. II Hurricane's Eye 03:35
8. Sound Zones 08:07
9. Riding The Storm 04:29
Antithesis - Reason And Preconception
Two Intellectual Interludes (Data And Process):
10. Strand Of Life ("Viroid") 01:21
11. From A Harmonic Algorithm 02:55
Synthesis - Imagination And Form
None Of The Above:
12. Passage 14:05

 

 Laurie Spiegel was born in Chicago (September 20, 1945) where in her teens she played guitar, banjo, mandolin

and through them cultivated a devout philosophy of amateur music making.
She became interested by electronics after using a tape-operated computer at Purdue University

as part of a high school class field trip.
At the age of 20, she taught herself Western music notation, after which she began writing down her compositions.
After receiving her bachelor's degree in sociology from Shimer in 1967, she stayed in Oxford for an additional year,

commuting to London to study guitar, music theory and composition with John W. Duarte,

then baroque and renaissance lute at Julliard and composition with Jacob Druckman and Vincent Persichetti.
Best known for her use of algorithmic composition techniques,

Spiegel worked with Buchla and Electronic Music Laboratories synthesizers and digital systems 

including Bell Labs' GROOVE system (1973–1978), the Bell Labs Digital Synthesizer (1977),

the alphaSyntauri synthesizer system for the Apple II computer (1978–1981) and the McLeyvier (1981–1985).
In various pieces, Spiegel has used musical algorithms to simulate natural phenomena,

emulate tonal harmony rules of earlier musical eras and sonically represent large data sets.

In her piece "Viroid" she used the genetic code of a simple organism to determine the pitches produced by a synthesizer.

In her 1977 piece "Improvisation On A Concerto Generator", she used an algorithm

designed to replicate Bach's "chorale-style harmonic progressions".

Many of Spiegel's non-algorithmic compositions also use algorithm-like rules

and claimed that defining these rules in computer code was simply a natural next step for her own musical self expression.
Spiegel's best known and most widely used software was Music Mouse (1986)

, a self-described "intelligent instrument" for Macintosh, Amiga and Atari computers.

In addition to improvisations using this software, Spiegel composed several works using Music Mouse 

including "Cavis Muris" in 1986, "Three Sonic Spaces" in 1989 and "Sound Zones" in 1990.
In addition to computer software development, Spiegel supported herself by both teaching and by soundtrack compositions.
Her musical interpretation of Johannes Kepler's "Harmonices Mundi"

appeared on "Sounds Of Earth" section of the Voyager Golden Record

while her 1972 piece "Sediment" was included in the 2012 film "The Hunger Games".
She has also been inducted into the National Women's Hall Of Fame.

 
Memory