Two perspectives on rebooting computer music education: Composition and computer science

Abstract

Laptop ensembles and orchestras, in addition to being hubs for collectives of experimental musicians, have become a popular feature in music technology tertiary education curricula. The (short) history of such groups reveals tensions in what these groups are for, and where they fit within their enfolding institutions. Are the members programmers, composers, or performers? Should laptop ensemble courses focus on performance practice, composition, or digital synthesis? Should they be anarchic or hierarchical? Eschewing potential answers, we instead pose a new question: what happens when computer science students and music students are jumbled together in the same group? In this paper, we discuss what a laptop ensemble might have to offer both groups of students and describe the results of our experiments in running joint laptop ensemble courses. We conclude with questions that motivate further iterations of our laptop ensemble as a promising site of computer music education in a modern university environment.