IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique)

IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) is a European institute for science about music and sound and avant garde electro-acoustical art music. It is situated next to, and is organizationally linked with, the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The extension of the building has been designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers. Several concepts for electronic music and audio processing have emerged at IRCAM. John Chowning did pioneer... more

IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) is a European institute for science about music and sound and avant garde electro-acoustical art music. It is situated next to, and is organizationally linked with, the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The extension of the building has been designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers. Several concepts for electronic music and audio processing have emerged at IRCAM. John Chowning did pioneering work on FM Synthesis at IRCAM, and the real-time audio processing graphical programming environment Max/MSP and many of its derivatives such as jMax, were developed there. Max/MSP has subsequently become a widely used tool in electroacoustic music. Many of the techniques associated with spectralism, such as analyses based on Fast Fourier Transforms, were made practical by technological contributions at IRCAM. IRCAM has also developed a special microphone capable of isolating each of the cello's four strings for separate amplification or... less