UPIC
musical composition tool devised by Iannis Xenakis
UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique CEMAMu) is a computerised musical composition tool, devised by the composer Iannis Xenakis. It was developed at the Centre d'Etudes de Mathématique et Automatique Musicales (CEMAMu) in Paris, and was completed in 1977. Xenakis used it on his subsequent piece Mycènes Alpha (1978) and two other works. It has also been used by composers such as Julio Estrada, (Eua´on (1980)), Jean-Claude Risset (on Saxatile (1992)), Jorge Antunes (Interlude de l'opéra Olga (1992)), François-Bernard Mâche (Hypérion (1981), Nocturne (1981), Tithon (1989), Moires (1994), Canopée (2003)), Zbigniew Karkowski (Uexkull (1991), Immortals By My Side (1992)),Takehito Shimazu (Illusions in Desolate Fields (1994)), Gérard Pape (Le Fleuve du Désir III (1994)), Curtis Roads (Purity (1994), Sonal Atoms (1998)), Florian Hecker and Russell Haswell (Blackest Ever Black, 2007). Aphex Twin implies that he uses UPIC in an interview where he is asked what software he uses and he replies that, "UPIC by Xenakis puts almost everything else to shame [and] it's under 1mb".
Physically, the UPIC is a digitising tablet linked to a computer, which has a vector display. Its functionality is similar to that of the later Fairlight CMI, in that the user draws waveforms and volume envelopes on the tablet, which are rendered by the computer. Once the waveforms have been stored, the user can compose with them by drawing compositions on the tablet, with the X-axis representing time, and the Y-axis representing pitch. The compositions can be stretched in duration from a few seconds to an hour. They can also be transposed, reversed, inverted, and subject to a number of algorithmic transformations.
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