European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 25, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Roger Dannenberg beams from behind the computer piano Tutor he developed with his collaborators music professors Maria Sanchez left an Annebelle Joseph at Carnegie Mellon University. The Tutor is a computer Bomarc Idunn associated press practice makes perfect in piano playing especially with the help of a  new computer Tutor keeps beginning pianists m line by selecting appropriate lessons then monitoring the students efforts on an electronic keyboard. Piano Tutor As it s called is just one example of How music minded researchers Are tapping technology and pushing beyond the boundaries of the familiar Moog synthesizer of the 1960s and 1970s. What we re doing is learning How to control the technology that is part of our culture and that s not just Lor the Sake of using technology says Craig Harris president of the computer music association. We need to re evaluate How we learn How we think about sound How we think about music and  piano Tutor accomplishes that As an instructional tool missing nary note nor beat. There was something extra Between these notes. Try again the computer hashes on a screen alter a less than Perlecy porn Romance by a student. Or you wailed too Long before playing this  you played this note too soon. Be sure to give the preceding rest its Lull  your rhythm was very uneven. Try keeping a steady beat during downright awful renditions the computer interrupts and instructs students to begin again and again and again in necessary. We re trying to Model this after real teachers and a real teacher would interrupt right at the beginning says Roger Dannenberg a research computer scientist at Pittsburgh s Carnegie Mellon University. His collaborators Annabelle Joseph and Maria Sanchez music professors at Carnegie Mellon have interrupted countless piano students Over the years for mistakes mysteriously materializing in practice. The three entered exercises and tunes such As Yankee Doodle Dandy into the computer by describing How the music appears on the written Page and by performing the selections on an attached electronic keyboard. Always As piano teachers you re concerned about what happens with a student Between  Joseph says no matter How carefully you explain things. Strange things happen in the week Between so you spend a lot of Lime  another Carnegie Mellon researcher Paul Mcavinney. Has invented video Harp. A computerized instrument capable of sensing gestures to reproduce the sound of any instrument including an entire orchestra. Images of a performer s fingers Are reflected by mirrors into an optical sensor Mcavinney designed. From this pattern of Light and Shadow the position and velocity of each fingertip Are deduced. The information subsequently is translated by computer and transmitted to synthesizers that produce the sound. The kind of sound emanating from amplifiers string woodwind percussion brass is determined by programs stored in the computer. Ii is neat that an absolute musical idiot like Mysell can make a Good sound by just having enough flexibility says Mcavinney a senior research Programmer at Carnegie Mellon and chairman of sensor Frame corp. While speaking Mcavinney haphazardly brushes his hands across both sides of the 13-Pound, trapezoid shaped instrument just As a harpist might. A Stream of deep Lush notes never before heard and Likely never to be heard again fills the Small music Laboratory. Each Finger is capable of reproducing a particular instrument s sound successively or simultaneously. Four fingers consequently can sound like a siring quartet with practice of course. Until five or so years ago so called computer music was impractical for live performances since it took longer to compute the sound than the sound actually lasted says Stephen Pope editor of the computer music journal. That changed in the Early 1980s with the Advent of digital synthesizers which enabled instruments to sound like something else anything else in fact while played the usual Way. Video Harp goes a step further by incorporating totally new ways of playing. Brushing one s toes against the instrument for example can generate sounds the same As using one s Fine s. While other researchers around the world Are trying to communicate with computers on an artistic level the Carnegie Mellon projects Are really Good major examples of in Harris says. How do you get a machine to be expressive a lot of people have complained about that he says. Even the piano is a machine. But the leap from the piano to a device like video Harp is a rather Large leap especially when it involves creating Many sounds that Are new to our  piano Tutor is significant Harris says in that it moves beyond routine instruction. There Are Many programs out there for doing exactly what we did in 1950, but now doing it in computers treating learning As if it were a notebook a classroom going Page by Page by Page and not really paying attention to what that particular person needs right now he says. Piano Tutor is still evolving according to Dannenberg and should be commercially available in three years. It s frustrating to declare a War and have no one show up Loril. That s what has been happening in the War on drugs forget the Pride and the spirit of our Young people marching off to Bailie to conquer the enemy. We can t even get their attention. It s not for the Lack of trying. We have bogged the yes generation to form the Battle cry "no1" we have threatened them with horror pictures of an egg frying in a Skillet with the explanation this is your brain on  we have flashed their friends their sports heroes and their Rock legends on the 10 o clock news As they shielded their eyes from the shame of their addiction. They still consider it a big joke. I Don t know anymore what in would take to make just one child think twice about trying drugs but i m going to give in a shot a Little Over two years ago i gathered a Bunch of kids around me and put their stories Between the covers of a new Book due out this week called / want of grow hair i want to Crow up i want to go to Boise. The title does t mean a lot unless you know that these Are the three wishes of a 9-year-old girl in Washington state who is recovering from cancer. In Tacl. All the kids in the Book Are recovering from cancer. You want to talk drugs you re a civilian when it comes to their expertise. For More than 30 years they have been in the trenches and the front lines of cancer research trying out every experimental drug that comes Down the Pike to see if it kills or cures. Although some of the kids Are so Little they can t pronounce or spell the drug they Are taking they re like a walking drugstore. What do these goodies do for them sometimes a drug curls feet and hands into positions that could be temporary or not. Others cause hair to fall out. Some create mood swings and sores in the Mouth and Down the oesophagus. A few of the drugs Render Muscles useless and the users must have a wheelchair. Many have a genetic Impact. Some drugs blow them up like an inflatable Beach Ball. Others make them lose weight and they become so weak they can barely hold on. If i sound angry count on it. You bet i m sore. I m angry because in a society where the drop out rate from school is a National epidemic i met a girl desperate to finish High school. In a world where people have every right and Hope of becoming 70 or 80 years old a Little boy is fighting to a 8. Peer pressure you say you want to know what peer pressure is it s a Bald headed 12-year-old girl at her first school Dancel one Young Man in remission said he tells his friends who do drugs you want to do drugs do chemotherapy for a year. It la make you feel just As  these kids Don t have a Choice. You do. Page 16 the stars and stripes monday september 25,1989