Today's western music scene created a "division of labor" between composers and performers. Until the last century in the classical music world, many composers were well known performers themselves; they were able to present their own works very effectively. In today's classical music scene, composers primarily do not perform, and performers do not compose. In the past few decades, realtime computer music technology has enabled many composers to directly participate in musical creation and performance simultaneously, with or without the professional skills and training in performing; now one could create music and be a performer without rigorous training in mastering one instrument, having to practice hours on end. This is definitely a positive development for creating musical performance by amateur performers, although some seem to indulge themselves by using a huge arsenal of equipment, and not paying much attention to improving the excellence of their own performance skills. I believe that there is some danger that the field of computer music could be sometimes misrepresented by these creations as a mere "playground" (curiously the title of ICMC '95 Banff).
In the future, I believe that there could be more individuals in computer music who possess both high-level musicianship and technological skills. There are already many classically trained composers who work in the field of computer music, and have been trained for years to master the craft of putting sounds together. However, I believe that the skill they acquire is rather different from the skill of being able to perform in front of an audience. Naturally, performers are trained to handle their instrument very intimately, making the instrument almost like an extension of their own body; mastering the craft of performing and handling the instrument seems difficult to achieve otherwise. As realtime computer music systems are closely connected with performance, I think that trained performers can be at advantage in this field.
To an average conservatory-trained musician, the language of computer music may still be somewhat foreign; computer music systems are designed for a large part by computer scientists and mathematicians, for computer scientists and mathematicians. The language and expressions, thus the concepts used in computer music systems, seem too numerical. For musicians, and for those of us who are used to go by musical expressions, these concepts might feel a little too detached and objective. I often find myself having to translate the numerical values and parameters of a music software, or of a synthesizer, into musical language by listening to the sounds. Parameters such as "0-99" for example, are sometimes useful but often irrelevant in subtle and crucial moments of making a musical phrase. I always have to make a match between numbers and sounds, trying to find the adequate musical expressions. Although musicians may be at some blame; numerical expressions and parameters usually scare them away and make them think that computer music is "not musical". Once one manages to get over the instinctive rejection, however, it is not as bad as it first seemed to be!
One could argue that the field of computer music is still in its infancy
compared to other musical traditions of music; then putting some efforts
to "grow up" seems like a healthy and logical next
step. I think that performers need to know more about computers, but
it seems that the computer music community could also acknowledge the need
of help from trained performers, by opening themselves up a little more.
I think that the musical "grown ups", the trained musicians, could help
if they got a little more support from the computer music community. I
think that parts of the future computer music equipment, both hardware
and software, can be designed by musicians, for musicians. This may be
easily achieved; computer hardware and software companies could start gradually
by hiring a conservatory-trained performer as a consultant to improve integration
between musical language and computer language. I would like to see more
musicians helping to develop computer music systems, making the underlying
concepts more musical than numerical. Speaking for my own needs, it would
be nice if all the computer music equipment continued to become even smaller
too!
In the future, I think that it would be ideal for the next generation
of music conservatory performance students to be able to write software,
invent and design instruments and interactive systems. The movement is
already underway; many music conservatories around the world now have electronic
music studios that are closely connected to performance programs. I would
like to see them developed even further; the students should be able to
use computers as equally intimately as they learn their own acoustic instruments,
and compose works that integrate both. Music conservatories could implement
more education in mathematics, physics and computer science, while keeping
teaching the art and craft of traditional classical performance. If the
field of computer music is to be integrated and to evolve further as an
art form into the main-stream musical culture, more force has to be generated
by trained performers. I foresee that the whole field will benefit as more
performers get intimately involved in computer technology. More dialog
should develop between the computer music community and musicians, crossing
the boundaries and working side by side together.