Music Thing: Le Cybersongosse
posted Apr 15th 2005 3:45PM
Music lessons at my old school consisted of a few shakers, a piano, and an old guy talking about Mozart. In France, things are very different. This awesome-looking psychedelic synth is the reason why there are so many cool French electronic musicians. It's the latest version of Le Cybersongosse, a series of synths developed at the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges. They've been used to teach French kids about recording technology and synthesis since 1973. This one is a hardware control surface connected to a G5 running MAX/MSP, the musical programming language developed in Paris at the IRCAM research institute, and now used by techno musicians like Aphex Twin. For basic lessons, kids use just the controller with a microphone. More advanced lessons are taught with a touch tablet and a monitor. When I first mentioned the Cybersongosse on Music Thing, the response was immediate and unanimous: "Never mind the French kids, where can I buy one?"
It should be pointed out that Max/MSP is developed in San Francisco by Cycling 74, not at IRCAM... though I understand a large number of cycling-affiliates have worked at IRCAM in the past.
Abelton Live for the kids!
yeah i work for ircam. we develop IN max/msp, but the actual lang is now developed by the lovely peeps at cycling 74 (all over the world actually not just in san fran my home town).
as for cybersongosse, it's cool but there are a ton of french projects for music tech in education (cite de la musique's folie musique, serge de laubier's meta instrument, valise pedagogique by interface-z, etc.).
---fabienne