The ubiquitous nature of communication in computer networks, firmly manifested in the Internet era, provided a context for the introduction of different collaborative tools widely accepted by the on-line community, such as textual chats, white boards, shared editors, video conference systems, shared spaces for the exchange of multimedia documents or even simple e-mail based collaborative systems.

In this paper the authors propose a new architecture and new features for collaborative music composition. These design principles have been applied, without any loss of generality, to a system that has already been extensively tested on-line for the last three years, and which has allowed composers from around the world to participate in the collective creation of two important theatrical scores. They can constitute the basis for new approaches for collective composition on the Internet.

Music today is more ubiquitous, accessible, and democratized than ever. Thanks to technologies such as high-end home studios, audio compression, and digital distribution, music now surrounds us in everyday life, almost every piece of music is a few minutes of download away, and almost any western musician, novice or expert, can compose, perform and distribute their music directly to their listeners from their home studios. But at the same time these technologies lead to some concerning social effects on the culture of consuming and creating music. Although music is available for more people, in more locations, and for longer periods of time, most listeners experience it in an incidental, unengaged, or utilitarian manner. On the creation side, home studios promote private and isolated practice of music making where hardly any musical instruments or even musicians are needed, and where the value of live

In this paper we describe "The Public Sound Objects" project and its context. This project, which is currently under development, approaches Internet collaborative music performance, going beyond most common paradigms where the network is mainly used as a channel to provide a connection between performative spaces. The system will provide an on-line public performance space where people can be found participating in an ongoing collaborative sonic event. The users connected to this installation control a server side synthesis engine through a web-based interface. The resulting "Sound Objects" form a sonic piece that is then streamed back to each user. The user takes the role of a performer and his contribution has a direct and unique influence on the overall resulting soundscape. This ongoing event is also played back at the installation for a live audience, with added contextual elements such as sound spacialization and metaphorical visual representations of current participants.

Auracle is a "group instrument," controlled by the voice, for real-time, interactive, distributed music making over the Internet. It is implemented in the Java programming language using a combination of publicly available libraries (JSyn and TransJam) and custom-built components. This paper describes how the various pieces --- the voice analysis, network communication, and sound synthesis --- are individually built and how they are combined to form Auracle.

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This work examines the features of human communication pertinent to collaboration. The domain of group music improvisation is used to explore the features of collaboration and to illustrate current support for such interaction. 1

In this paper the authors propose a new architecture and new features for collaborative music composition. These design principles have been applied, without any loss of generality, to a system that has already been extensively tested on-line for the last three years, and which has allowed composers from around the world to participate in the collective creation of two important theatrical scores. They can constitute the basis for new approaches for collective composition on the Internet.

Abstract not found

Advancements in technology, ranging from the decreasing cost of PCs and availability of broadband technology through to the spread of mobile computing technology, open up interesting possibilities in collaborative music composition. To-date technology approaches in this field have yet to fully explore all of the possibilities that new technology offers. We believe, that for any advancements to be made in the area of collaborative composition, progress must first be made in the area of notation, for as Bamberger points out “Music notation is a complicated and nonintuitive representation of musical information and for many it is the point at which interest in learning music ceases ”[1]. Some successful attempts to overcome the limitations of notation have been based upon informal GUIs and Papert’s idea of a microworld [2]. These systems give the user a chance to build and explore musical concepts in a more intuitive way than with formal notation. Examples of these are Hyperscore [3] , Impromptu [4] and DrumSteps [5]. This paper focuses on the tradeoffs in educational functionality that must be made in order to meet the technical challenges presented by deploying software of this kind in different domains. This paper looks at how to tailor one of these composition microworlds, DrumSteps, for use on various platforms that are suitable for collaboration. The paper will outline the design of a version for use with handheld computers. Following which the paper will outline the design of two versions of the software that are suitable for deployment over the internet to be used in asynchronous collaboration environments. In each case we will discuss the trade offs in educational functionality that had to be made to facilitate the new technology. Keywords: music education, collaborative learning, interactive learning environments, interface design