Music for Contrabass & Computer is a piece of the American composer Cort Lippe, for contrabass and computer written in 1995. During the sonology discussion concert of 28th april this piece was performed by sonology student Yamilla Ríos and Erasmus exchange student Ariel Eberstein.


For the subject Live Electronic Music they realized this work as an example of a piece that combines an instrument with (live) electronics, in this case the computer.


The computer part is performed by a program that has been written by the composer and that records and transforms contrabass sounds. Originally this program was written in the environment Max for ISPW, but has now been realized for MaxMSP.


The relationship between computer and contrabass describes the composer as follows:


  1. Technically the computer tracks parameters of the contrabass, such as pitch, amplitude, spectrum, density, rests, articulation, tempi, etc., and uses this information to trigger specific  electronic events, and to continuously control all the computer sound output by directly controlling the digital synthesis algorithms. Thus the performer is expected to “interact” with the computer, triggering and continuously shaping all of the computer output.


In this way a relationship is created between computer and instrument that changes from sounds extending the contrabass to a second voice that independently from the contrabass follows it’s own logic.