Improvising Computer Music: an Approach

I describe here my experience in interactive and improvised electro-acoustic music after having developed both hardware and software tools using which I compose and perform music. The research in the whole finds the roots in my active involvement in jazz music. This paper analyses the jazz approach to improvisation in terms of the involved components and emphasizes the importance of expressiveness and feeling in live performance. Then it proposes a schematic approach to improvising computer music, which gives musicians the same expressive approach, found in jazz, in the new electro-acoustic domain. Two different original gesture recognition devices and systems are described together with a real-time music language, or better, framework based on C-language for sound synthesis and event management. The role of mapping is proposed as crucial and peculiar of the new approach.