'Live' versus 'Real-time'

Emmerson, Simon

1994

Contemporary Music Review 10(2): 95-101.

Language: English

The term 'live electronic music' faded slowly but steadily from the vocabulary between about 1975 and 1985, giving way to the term 'real-time'. But language cannot so simply obscure a fundamental misunderstanding that has come with this change. The human performer has somehow been subsumed into the computer itself, as into the terminology that goes with it. In this article, the author hopes to start to unravel some of the confusion this situated has created, concentrating on timbral cues and their relation to the terms 'live' and 'real-time'.