When most think of a portrait, a visual medium like painting or photography comes to mind. Rodney Waschka, a professor of arts studies at NC State and the program director of arts studies and the Arts NOW Series, turns that idea on its head by creating musical portraits using computer technology and software.
The process of creating computer music is not simple. According to Waschka, it consists of two main things: digital synthesis, where sounds are created or modified, and algorithmic composition, which is where either a person or a machine determines what is going to be utilized in the piece.
Along with his experience with the International Computer Music Conference, Waschka was inspired by Virgil Thomson, a 20th century composer and music critic. Thomson conducted musical portraits as well, but he had a person sit in front of him in real life, and he created music by looking at them. He made many portraits including one of Pablo Picasso and Aaron Copland. Waschka updated Thomson’s idea of musical portraits and incorporated the use of computer music, he takes input and pixels from pictures, book covers, audio and many other sources to make a portrait of a person in a different way.
“The mapping of images to sound using a computer program is not new, but the use of this technique to create this type of portrait piece is a new extension of Thomson’s idea,” Waschka said. He has used this idea to create computer music portraits of a variety of different people.
Waschka has composed many pieces including portraits of Stephanie Spencer and Jonathan C. Kramer. Spencer is an art history professor at NC State who used to ride horses as a hobby and a form of exercise. Kramer is a professor of music and arts studies at NC State, an ethnomusicologist and an avid cellist. Waschka was hired as part of the Arts Studies Program at NC State in 1990 and has become good friends with both Spencer and Kramer during his years in the department, which is a prevalent reason that he chose to conduct portraits on them.
“In Dr. Spencer’s case, I used the cover of her book to represent her research,” Waschka said. “With Dr. Kramer, I asked him to play his cello but I also used a photo of him with his cello that I used as input.”
The portraits take on style that can range from jarring to ethereal with abstract sounds reverberating through an imagined scape. Spencer said she had a positive experience with having a musical portrait made of her.
“That’s one of the nice things about Waschka is that he thinks in a way that most people don’t,” Spencer said. “So something like trying to match sound and vision is the kind of thing that he would think of and most people probably wouldn’t.”
The portraits aim to reflect who both Spencer and Kramer are as individuals, educators and artists.
“I was especially interested in and sort of amused by the horse beat/type of rhythm that was absolutely me when I had that horse,” Spencer said. “My friends even told me that it sounded like me.”
Waschka continues to make music and teach others about composing music on NC State’s campus. He also shares his talent at NC State through teaching classes like Music Composition with Computers where students regularly write their own computer music and programs.
