Weinberg
Gil Weinberg
Music Department
Georgia Institute of Technology
840 McMillan St.
Atlanta, Georgia 30332 USA
gilwein@cc.gatech.edu
Interconnected Musical
Networks: Toward a
Theoretical Framework
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This article attempts to define and classify the aes-
thetic and technical principles of interconnected
musical networks. It presents an historical overview
of technological innovations that were instrumen-
tal for the development of the field and discusses a
number of paradigmatic musical networks that are
based on these technologies. A classification of on-
line and local-area musical networks then leads to
an attempt to define a taxonomical and theoretical
framework for musical interconnectivity, address-
ing goals and motivations, social organizations and
perspectives, network architectures and topologies,
and musical content and control. The article con-
cludes with a number of design suggestions for the
development of effective interconnected musical
networks.
Interdependent Music Performance
Music performance is an interdependent art form.
Musicians’ real-time gestures are constantly influ-
enced by the music they hear, which are recipro-
cally influenced by their own actions. In group
playing, the interdependent effect bears unique so-
cial consequences such as the formulation of lead-
ers and followers or changes in individual players’
dynamics and timing in correlation to group syn-
chronization (Rasch 1988). Other manifestations of
interdependent group routines can be found in a va-
riety of musical genres such as Western chamber
music, Jazz, Gamelan, Persian music, and others
(see details in Weinberg 2002). Performers often
address the importance of interdependent group col-
laboration and sharing in their music. Jazz per-
former Milt Hinton noted, “I was pretty young
when I realized that music involved more than play-
ing an instrument; it’s really about cohesiveness
and sharing . . . I’ve always believed you don’t truly
know something yourself until you can take it from
your mind and put it in someone else’s” (Hinton
and Morgenstern 1988). Cognitive scientists, on the
other hand, tend to address the perceptual aspects of
interdependent group play. William Benzon (2001)
discusses his experience playing Ghanaian Bells in a
group of four: “melodies would emerge that no one
was playing . . . it arose from cohesions in the shift-
ing patterns of tone played by the ensemble. . . .
Occasionally, something quite remarkable would
happen. When we were really locked together in
animated playing, we could hear relatively high-
pitched tones that no one was playing.” Benzon
uses this example to strengthen his definition of
music as “a medium though which individual
brains are coupled together in shared activity.”
But although acoustic-interdependent models
provide an infrastructure for a variety of approaches
for interconnections and interdependencies among
players, they do not allow for actual manipulation
and control of each other’s explicit musical voices.
Only by constructing electronic (or mechanical)
communication channels among players can partic-
ipants take an active role in determining and influ-
encing not only their own musical output but also
that of their peers. For example, consider a player
who, while controlling the pitch of his or her own
instrument, continuously manipulates the timbre
of a peer’s instrument. This manipulation will prob-
ably lead the second player to modify his or her play
gestures in accordance to the new timbre that was
received. These modified gestures can then be cap-
tured and transmitted to a third player, influencing
this player’s music playing in a reciprocal loop. An-
other example is a network that allows players to
share musical motifs with other members of the
group. By sending a motif to a co-player who can
transform it and send it back to the group, partici-
pants can combine their musical ideas into a con-
stantly evolving collaborative musical outcome.
The shape of the composition in such systems
grows from the topology of the network and its in-
terconnections with the performers. Such an envi-
ronment that responds to input from individuals in
a reciprocal loop can be likened to a musical “ecosys-
tem.” In this metaphor, the network serves as a habi-
Computer Music Journal, 29:2, pp. 23–39, Summer 2005
© 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

tat that supports its inhabitants (players) through a
topology of interconnections and mutual responses
that can, when successful, lead to new breeds of
musical life forms. These interdependent connec-
tions can bring a wide range of new experiences into
musical group playing. For example, a soloist can
guide his or her collaborators with a simple interde-
pendent touch toward a musical idea in which the
soloist is interested, or change a supporting voice
into a contrasting one so that a desired musical idea
will become clearer. Players can shape their peers’
accompaniment line so they would lead toward a
new direction when the current one is exhausted,
send a motif to other players who can manipulate it
and send their variations back to the group, have a
musical response accentuated by the player who
sent the original call, plant a musical “seed” that
would be picked up by the group in various man-
ners, etc. Musical networks, therefore, bear the
promise of using technology to enhance the social
context of music performance and enrich its social
ritual roots.
Technological and Historical Landmarks
The development of interconnected musical net-
works during the last half century is closely related
to several technological developments that occurred
during that time. In particular, I see four major in-
novations—analog electronics, the personal com-
puter, the Internet, and alternate controllers—as
principal enablers for the various approaches taken
for interdependent musical connectivity. When
these technologies became widespread and com-
mercially available, they inspired musicians who
were looking for new ways to expand the vocabu-
lary of socio-musical expression.
Analog Electronics: The Early Musical Networks
John Cage was one of the first to notice the expres-
sive potential that lies in using technology to en-
hance musical group interdependency by treating
the then-recently invented commercial transistor
radio as a musical instrument that could be used to
provide a sonic medium for interdependent proce-
dures, rules, and processes. Cage’s compositions for
transistor radios allowed, for the first time, for an
external entity (audio steams from a set of radio sta-
tions) to generate and support evolving and dynamic
musical contexts, providing a first crude glimpse at
the concept of musical networks. Cage’s 1951 Imag-
inary Landscape No. 4 for twelve radio transistors
played by 24 performers can be considered the first
electronic interdependent musical network. The
composition’s score indicates the exact tuning and
volume settings for each performer but with no
foreknowledge of what might be broadcast at any
specific time or whether a station even exists at any
given dial setting. Inspired by the Chinese book of
oracles, the I Ching, Cage demonstrated his fascina-
tion with chance operation, allowing players to con-
trol only partial aspects of the composition, while
technology, chance, and performers together deter-
mined the actual audible content. The role of Cage
as a composer was narrowed down to setting the
high-level blueprint of dial-setting instructions.
The interdependency in the piece was manifested
in two planes. First, there were the interdependent
interactions between the players and the network of
radio stations that provided unknown and dynamic
musical content. But the system also supported intra-
player interdependencies, as for every frequency-
dial player there was a volume-dial player who
could manipulate the final output gain, controlling
a full continuum from complete muting to maxi-
mum amplification. The volume-dial players, there-
fore, had a significant impact on their peer’s musical
output, as they could control anything from render-
ing their actions inaudible, through blending them
smoothly in the mix, to boosting them as a scream-
ing solo.
The explorations of the transistor radio as an in-
frastructure for interdependency opened the door to
further experimentation with interdependency. In
Cartridge Music (1960), for example, Cage made his
first attempt at a musical network focused on tactile
generation of sounds and intra-player, amplification-
based interdependencies. Here, players were in-
structed to pluck small objects (such as toothpicks
or pins) that have been put into a gramophone car-
tridge and to hit larger objects (such as chairs) that
24 Computer Music Journal