David A. Jaffe
Encyclopedia
David Aaron Jaffe is an American composer who has written over ninety works for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, and electronics. He is best known for his use of technology as an electronic-music
or computer-music
composer in works such as Silicon Valley Breakdown, though his non-electronic music has also been widely performed. He is also known for his development of computer music algorithmic innovations, such as the physical modeling of plucked and bowed strings, as well as for his development of music software such as the NeXT
Music Kit
.
From 1973-1975, he toured with the eclectic bluegrass band Bottle Hill, often arranging and composing for the group, incorporating elements of jazz and contemporary music. He also recorded and toured with such innovative bluegrass musicians such as Tony Trischka
and Stacy Philips.
He attended Ithaca College, where he studied composition with Karel Husa
; then Bennington College, where he studied composition, orchestration and counterpoint with Henry Brant
and electronic music with Joel Chadabe, receiving a B.A. in music and math in 1978.
He received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stanford University in 1983, where he was part of the computer music group at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, then later CCRMA (the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics). He worked with faculty and colleagues John Chowning
, Julius Smith and others. In addition to his musical work, he did pioneering research in physical modeling and other aspects of computer music.
He has since maintained multiple parallel careers as a composer, researcher and music software developer.
, the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Ensemble, Chanticleer, Earplay and numerous choruses, string quartets and other chamber ensembles. His music has been featured at international music festivals, including the Berlin Festival, the Bergen Festival, the ISCM Warsaw Autumn Festival, the Venice Biennale, the Bourges Festival, the American Festival in London, the Music in the Americas festival in Buenos Aires and the Spring in Havana Festival. His works have been broadcast internationally as part of the WGBH radio program "Art of the States." He has received numerous commissions from ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet, the Russian National Orchestra, American Guild of Organists, and Chanticleer, for whom he was the N.E.A. Composer-in-Residence in 1990. (He also received N.E.A. Composer Fellowships in 1982 and 1991, as well as a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2001.) His music is published by Schott, Plucked String Editions and Terra Non Firma Press (BMI.)
(a close friend and mentor), as well as that of Carl Ruggles
and Charles Ives
. Often based on interrelationships, juxtaposition, and synthesis, Jaffe’s works frequently merge abstract and "representational" material, and draw upon such varied sources as world music, jazz, and historical Western concert styles.
In addition, his works often draw upon extra-musical elements such as bird song (in such works as “Impossible Animals,” in which a bird sings with a synthesized human voice”) and political issues (in works such as “No Trumpets, No Drums” based on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.)
Several of his recent pieces have focused on the Afro-Cuban musical tradition, including "Underground Economy," for Cuban jazz pianist Hilario Duran, with violin and interactive electronics; and “Bull’s Eye,” for violin, cello and Afro-Cuban percussion.
Jaffe himself is a mandolinist and violinist and frequently performs such diverse styles as Afro-Cuban charanga, bluegrass, and klezmer, as well as in his own works. He has shared the stage with bluegrass greats Mike Marshall, Tony Trischka
and Vassar Clements
.
In addition, he has frequently written for unusual homogeneous instrumental combinations. Works in this vein include Celebration and Remembrance for 3 piccolos, 4 C flutes, 2 alto flutes and bass flute, Who's on First? for five double-basses, and May All Your Children Be Acrobats for eight guitars, voice and electronics.
Other unusual combinations include A Little Kid Sees a Skyscraper for two quarter-tone-tuned guitars; Would You Just As Soon Sing As Make That Noise??, a double-concerto for mandolin, violin and orchestra; and The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, for Radio-drum-performed piano, mandolin, guitar, harp, bass, harpsichord, harmonium and two percussionists.
to write a work for eight guitars, voice and tape. When he returned to Stanford in the fall of 1981, he began work on the computer part. As part of the composition of the tape part, he strove to use Chowning’s FM synthesis technique to simulate plucked strings, as a way of bridging the sonic gulf between the live guitars and the tape, but had only partial success. Then a fortuitous event occurred. While playing the Mozart piano quartet, he mentioned to the violist, Alex Strong, that he was working on guitar synthesis. Strong excitedly told him about a new technique he had discovered. After appropriate non-disclosure forms had been signed (Strong was applying for a patent), he brought Jaffe into his confidence and showed him the technique. Jaffe was impressed with the clarity and realism of the technique and Strong allowed Jaffe to use it in his composition. Returning to CCRMA, Jaffe began working with the technique, but quickly ran into its limitations. He began innovating and extending the technique to solve problems of tuning, dynamics, expression, and many other issues, in collaboration with electrical engineering PhD student, Julius Smith.
After the premiere of “May All Your Children Be Acrobats,” which combined the new technique and the FM synthesis-based method, Jaffe decided to tackle a work for four-channel tape alone, further exploiting the plucked string synthesis techniques. The result, Silicon Valley Breakdown, was premiered at the Vennice Biennale in 1983 and has been performed in over twenty-five countries. It is widely regarded as a landmark work in the field [this is a sample of available references].
At the same time, he and Smith presented a seminal paper on the technique at the 1983 International Computer Music Conference. This paper was then published back-to-back with the Karplus/Strong paper in Computer Music Journal. The paper has also appeared in book form in “The Music Machine,” by MIT Press.
Silicon Valley Breakdown also included innovations in simulated ensemble synchronization and the development of the Time Map. This work is described in the article Ensemble Aspects of Computer Music, published in Computer Music Journal.
The finale from the piece was featured in The Digital Domain, one of the first compact discs ever made, created to showcase the new technology. It was released by Elektra/Asylum in 1983. The work has also been released on several CDs, including XXIst century mandolin and Dinosaur Music.
)originally developed by Bob Boie and Max Mathews
as a three-dimensional mouse at Bell Labs. Jaffe has used in such works as the massive "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World," hailed by Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle for the "resourceful intricacy and variety of Jaffe's writing". These works have been developed in close collaboration with percussionist/composer Andrew Schloss
. Jaffe and Schloss describe their approach in a number of articles, including The Computer-Extended Ensemble, published in Computer Music Journal in 1994.
In Racing Against Time, for Radio-drum-controlled electronics, two saxophones, two violins and piano, Jaffe used the SynthCore sound engine (designed at Staccato Systems, Inc.) to synthesize physical models of electric guitar, jet fly-by, and car engine effects.
Other works for Radio-drum include Underground Economy, for Cuban improvising pianist, violinist and Radio-drum; and Wildlife, for Zeta violin and Radio-drum.
Jaffe has also written for the Radio Baton (of Max Mathews
), a close relative of the Radio-drum, in such works as Terra Non Firma, for four cellos and Radio Baton-conducted electronics.
Most recently, he collaborated with Seattle sound artist/inventor Trimpin to create The Space Between Us.
in Seattle through Andrew Schloss, who was in the process of commissioning a work from Jaffe (with support from the Canada Arts Council) for Radio-drum-controled piano and string quartet. However, in view of the similarity to the The Seven Wonders..., Jaffe was searching for a way to transform the project into one that would explore new territory. The answer came after Henry Brant's death, when he inherited Brant's percussion instruments (18 chimes, a xylophone and a glockenspiel.) He traveled to Santa Barabara to visit Brant's widow and pack up the instruments for shipping, and learned that Trimpin had also inherited some of Brant's instruments (Trimpin and Brant had been planning a collaboration that never came to fruition.) Jaffe approached Trimpin with a proposal to transform the Brant instruments into robotic contraptions. The piece took its final form when Charles Amirkhanian and Other Minds joined the commission consortium, along with a grant from the James Irvine Foundation. The instrumentation was augmented to include a second string quartet. In The Space Between Us, the chimes are hung from the ceiling above the audience, the xylophone is split in two and placed at the extreme left and right of the stage and the glockenspiel and a Disklavier piano are on stage. All of the percussion and piano are controlled by the Radio-drum and the strings are positioned in the aisles surrounding the audience, with two cellos in the extreme rear of the hall, followed (rear-to-front) by violas, violins II and violins I. The work was premiered on March 4, 2011 at the 2011 Other Minds Festival in San Francisco. In his program notes Jaffe wrote that the piece "explores what can be communicated and what must remain unsaid as eight isolated string players embedded in the audience, and one percussionist alone on stage, reach out to one another.". Reviews of the concert can be found at the following references: and.
Other nature-inspired pieces include Territory for two violins, Bird Seasons for four voices, Whoop For Your Life! for orchestra and Bristlecone Concerto for violin and ensemble (also versions for violin, mandolin, ensemble and computer-generated tape; and mandolin and computer-generated tape.)
. As the first computer to ship with a DSP capable of real-time sound synthesis, Jaffe and Julius Smith collaborated to create a programmable environment called the Music Kit, which fused elements of Music 5 and MIDI in an object-oriented environment.
In the mid-1990s, he developed the sound for games such as Welcome to West Feedback, and Quest for Fame, collaborating with bands such as Aerosmith, for the Boston-based company Ahead (later Virtual Music Entertainment). These games used a special guitar controller and pick called the "vPick", and were precursors to products such as Guitar Hero.
In the late 1990s, he was a co-founder of Staccato Systems, and developed the SynthCore sound engine. Staccato Systems was acquired by Analog Devices in 2001, where Jaffe continued as Chief Architect and developed SoundMAX (which has shipped on over 80 million PCs) and VisualAudio, presented at the 2006 Audio Engineering Society Conference in New York.
Since 2006, he has been Senior Scientist/Engineer at Universal Audio, where he developed the DSP system for the UAD-2 hardware, used to emulate classic analog hardware.
He has been awarded several patents, as well as awards from the Bourges Festival and the International Engineering Consortium.
He has been a frequent Resident Artist at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and has done composing residencies at the Edna Saint Vincent Millay Colony and elsewhere. He has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the US Information Agency, the Goethe Foundation, the Presser Foundation, the Ross McGee Foundation, Meet-the-Composer and others.
Also works on the following compilation CDs:
Also works on the following DVD:
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
or computer-music
Computer music
Computer music is a term that was originally used within academia to describe a field of study relating to the applications of computing technology in music composition; particularly that stemming from the Western art music tradition...
composer in works such as Silicon Valley Breakdown, though his non-electronic music has also been widely performed. He is also known for his development of computer music algorithmic innovations, such as the physical modeling of plucked and bowed strings, as well as for his development of music software such as the NeXT
NeXT
Next, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets...
Music Kit
Music Kit
The Music Kit was a software package for the NeXT computer. First developed by David A. Jaffe and Julius O. Smith, it supported the Motorolla 56001 DSP that was included on the NeXT mother board. It was also the first architecture to unify the Music-N and MIDI paradigms...
.
Biography
Jaffe grew up in a musical family, with his father a gifted mandolinist. He began studying violin at an early age with violin pedagogue Samuel Applebaum. He studied guitar and oboe, and taught himself 5-string banjo, mandolin, electric bass and cello. He played in folk, rock and jazz bands and began composing in high school, including works for string quartet and symphonic band.From 1973-1975, he toured with the eclectic bluegrass band Bottle Hill, often arranging and composing for the group, incorporating elements of jazz and contemporary music. He also recorded and toured with such innovative bluegrass musicians such as Tony Trischka
Tony Trischka
Tony Trischka is an American five-string banjo player.-Biography:Tony Trischka was born in Syracuse, New York, and graduated from Syracuse University with a B.A in Fine Arts, and was inspired to play the banjo in 1963, listening to the Kingston Trio's "Charlie and The MTA". Trischka was a...
and Stacy Philips.
He attended Ithaca College, where he studied composition with Karel Husa
Karel Husa
Karel Husa is a Czech-born classical composer and conductor, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize and 1993 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition...
; then Bennington College, where he studied composition, orchestration and counterpoint with Henry Brant
Henry Brant
Henry Dreyfuss Brant was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques.- Biography :...
and electronic music with Joel Chadabe, receiving a B.A. in music and math in 1978.
He received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stanford University in 1983, where he was part of the computer music group at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, then later CCRMA (the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics). He worked with faculty and colleagues John Chowning
John Chowning
John M. Chowning is an American composer, musician, inventor, and professor best known for his work at Stanford University and his invention of FM synthesis while there.-Contribution:...
, Julius Smith and others. In addition to his musical work, he did pioneering research in physical modeling and other aspects of computer music.
He has since maintained multiple parallel careers as a composer, researcher and music software developer.
Composing career
Jaffe has taught composition at Stanford, the University of California San Diego, Princeton University and Melbourne University, where he was the MacGeorge Fellow. His music has been issued on ten CDs, including two solo CDs from Well-Tempered Productions, and has been presented by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Brooklyn PhilharmonicBrooklyn Philharmonic
The Brooklyn Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, commonly known as the Brooklyn Philharmonic, is an American orchestra based in the borough of Brooklyn, in New York City...
, the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Ensemble, Chanticleer, Earplay and numerous choruses, string quartets and other chamber ensembles. His music has been featured at international music festivals, including the Berlin Festival, the Bergen Festival, the ISCM Warsaw Autumn Festival, the Venice Biennale, the Bourges Festival, the American Festival in London, the Music in the Americas festival in Buenos Aires and the Spring in Havana Festival. His works have been broadcast internationally as part of the WGBH radio program "Art of the States." He has received numerous commissions from ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet, the Russian National Orchestra, American Guild of Organists, and Chanticleer, for whom he was the N.E.A. Composer-in-Residence in 1990. (He also received N.E.A. Composer Fellowships in 1982 and 1991, as well as a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2001.) His music is published by Schott, Plucked String Editions and Terra Non Firma Press (BMI.)
Musical Approach
His musical approach carries forward the innovative spirit of the late American composer Henry BrantHenry Brant
Henry Dreyfuss Brant was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques.- Biography :...
(a close friend and mentor), as well as that of Carl Ruggles
Carl Ruggles
Charles "Carl" Sprague Ruggles was an American composer of the American Five group. He wrote finely crafted pieces using "dissonant counterpoint", a term coined by Charles Seeger to describe Ruggles' music...
and Charles Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
. Often based on interrelationships, juxtaposition, and synthesis, Jaffe’s works frequently merge abstract and "representational" material, and draw upon such varied sources as world music, jazz, and historical Western concert styles.
In addition, his works often draw upon extra-musical elements such as bird song (in such works as “Impossible Animals,” in which a bird sings with a synthesized human voice”) and political issues (in works such as “No Trumpets, No Drums” based on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.)
Several of his recent pieces have focused on the Afro-Cuban musical tradition, including "Underground Economy," for Cuban jazz pianist Hilario Duran, with violin and interactive electronics; and “Bull’s Eye,” for violin, cello and Afro-Cuban percussion.
Jaffe himself is a mandolinist and violinist and frequently performs such diverse styles as Afro-Cuban charanga, bluegrass, and klezmer, as well as in his own works. He has shared the stage with bluegrass greats Mike Marshall, Tony Trischka
Tony Trischka
Tony Trischka is an American five-string banjo player.-Biography:Tony Trischka was born in Syracuse, New York, and graduated from Syracuse University with a B.A in Fine Arts, and was inspired to play the banjo in 1963, listening to the Kingston Trio's "Charlie and The MTA". Trischka was a...
and Vassar Clements
Vassar Clements
Vassar Clements was a Grammy Award- winning American jazz, swing, and bluegrass fiddler. Clements has been dubbed the Father of Hillbilly Jazz, an improvisational style that blends and borrows from swing, hot jazz, and bluegrass along with roots also in country and other musical...
.
Orchestration and Instrumentation
Orchestration is a primary compositional determinant in Jaffe's music; that is, the orchestration is a basic part of the plan of the piece. His instrumentation is often distinctive, focusing on relationships between timbres rather than instruments. He tends to seek large orchestral sounds, even in the context of chamber music. He has a particular fondness for plucked strings, as in City Life, for mandolin, guitar, harpsichord and 5-string banjo.In addition, he has frequently written for unusual homogeneous instrumental combinations. Works in this vein include Celebration and Remembrance for 3 piccolos, 4 C flutes, 2 alto flutes and bass flute, Who's on First? for five double-basses, and May All Your Children Be Acrobats for eight guitars, voice and electronics.
Other unusual combinations include A Little Kid Sees a Skyscraper for two quarter-tone-tuned guitars; Would You Just As Soon Sing As Make That Noise??, a double-concerto for mandolin, violin and orchestra; and The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, for Radio-drum-performed piano, mandolin, guitar, harp, bass, harpsichord, harmonium and two percussionists.
Development of Silicon Valley Breakdown
In 1981, Jaffe received a commission from guitarist David StarobinDavid Starobin
David Starobin is an American classical guitarist, record producer, and film director. He is married to Rebecca Askew Starobin , and is the father of Robert Joseph Starobin III , and Allegra Rose Starobin David Starobin (born September 27, 1951 in New York City) is an American classical...
to write a work for eight guitars, voice and tape. When he returned to Stanford in the fall of 1981, he began work on the computer part. As part of the composition of the tape part, he strove to use Chowning’s FM synthesis technique to simulate plucked strings, as a way of bridging the sonic gulf between the live guitars and the tape, but had only partial success. Then a fortuitous event occurred. While playing the Mozart piano quartet, he mentioned to the violist, Alex Strong, that he was working on guitar synthesis. Strong excitedly told him about a new technique he had discovered. After appropriate non-disclosure forms had been signed (Strong was applying for a patent), he brought Jaffe into his confidence and showed him the technique. Jaffe was impressed with the clarity and realism of the technique and Strong allowed Jaffe to use it in his composition. Returning to CCRMA, Jaffe began working with the technique, but quickly ran into its limitations. He began innovating and extending the technique to solve problems of tuning, dynamics, expression, and many other issues, in collaboration with electrical engineering PhD student, Julius Smith.
After the premiere of “May All Your Children Be Acrobats,” which combined the new technique and the FM synthesis-based method, Jaffe decided to tackle a work for four-channel tape alone, further exploiting the plucked string synthesis techniques. The result, Silicon Valley Breakdown, was premiered at the Vennice Biennale in 1983 and has been performed in over twenty-five countries. It is widely regarded as a landmark work in the field [this is a sample of available references].
At the same time, he and Smith presented a seminal paper on the technique at the 1983 International Computer Music Conference. This paper was then published back-to-back with the Karplus/Strong paper in Computer Music Journal. The paper has also appeared in book form in “The Music Machine,” by MIT Press.
Silicon Valley Breakdown also included innovations in simulated ensemble synchronization and the development of the Time Map. This work is described in the article Ensemble Aspects of Computer Music, published in Computer Music Journal.
The finale from the piece was featured in The Digital Domain, one of the first compact discs ever made, created to showcase the new technology. It was released by Elektra/Asylum in 1983. The work has also been released on several CDs, including XXIst century mandolin and Dinosaur Music.
The Radio-Drum and The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Since 1990, he has written extensively for an innovative electronic controller called the "Radio-drum," (aka radiodrumRadiodrum
The Radiodrum is a musical instrument played in three dimensional space using two drumsticks. It was developed at Bell Labs in the 1980s, originally to be a three dimensional substitute for the computer mouse. Currently it is used as a musical instrument similar to a MIDI controller in the sense...
)originally developed by Bob Boie and Max Mathews
Max Mathews
Max Vernon Mathews was a pioneer in the world of computer music.-Biography:...
as a three-dimensional mouse at Bell Labs. Jaffe has used in such works as the massive "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World," hailed by Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle for the "resourceful intricacy and variety of Jaffe's writing". These works have been developed in close collaboration with percussionist/composer Andrew Schloss
Andrew Schloss
Andrew Schloss is a musician and computer engineer. Schloss is perhaps best known for his virtuosity on the Radiodrum, a three-dimensional midi-controller. Schloss is a pioneer in computer-music technology, and worked at IRCAM and the CCRMA in the 1980s. He has performed with Léon Theremin, Laurie...
. Jaffe and Schloss describe their approach in a number of articles, including The Computer-Extended Ensemble, published in Computer Music Journal in 1994.
In Racing Against Time, for Radio-drum-controlled electronics, two saxophones, two violins and piano, Jaffe used the SynthCore sound engine (designed at Staccato Systems, Inc.) to synthesize physical models of electric guitar, jet fly-by, and car engine effects.
Other works for Radio-drum include Underground Economy, for Cuban improvising pianist, violinist and Radio-drum; and Wildlife, for Zeta violin and Radio-drum.
Jaffe has also written for the Radio Baton (of Max Mathews
Max Mathews
Max Vernon Mathews was a pioneer in the world of computer music.-Biography:...
), a close relative of the Radio-drum, in such works as Terra Non Firma, for four cellos and Radio Baton-conducted electronics.
Most recently, he collaborated with Seattle sound artist/inventor Trimpin to create The Space Between Us.
The Space Between Us, a tribute to Henry Brant
Jaffe first met TrimpinTrimpin
Trimpin is a Seattle, Washington-based kinetic sculptor, sound artist, musician, and composer, most of whose pieces integrate both sculpture and music in some way, and many of which make use of computers to play these instruments...
in Seattle through Andrew Schloss, who was in the process of commissioning a work from Jaffe (with support from the Canada Arts Council) for Radio-drum-controled piano and string quartet. However, in view of the similarity to the The Seven Wonders..., Jaffe was searching for a way to transform the project into one that would explore new territory. The answer came after Henry Brant's death, when he inherited Brant's percussion instruments (18 chimes, a xylophone and a glockenspiel.) He traveled to Santa Barabara to visit Brant's widow and pack up the instruments for shipping, and learned that Trimpin had also inherited some of Brant's instruments (Trimpin and Brant had been planning a collaboration that never came to fruition.) Jaffe approached Trimpin with a proposal to transform the Brant instruments into robotic contraptions. The piece took its final form when Charles Amirkhanian and Other Minds joined the commission consortium, along with a grant from the James Irvine Foundation. The instrumentation was augmented to include a second string quartet. In The Space Between Us, the chimes are hung from the ceiling above the audience, the xylophone is split in two and placed at the extreme left and right of the stage and the glockenspiel and a Disklavier piano are on stage. All of the percussion and piano are controlled by the Radio-drum and the strings are positioned in the aisles surrounding the audience, with two cellos in the extreme rear of the hall, followed (rear-to-front) by violas, violins II and violins I. The work was premiered on March 4, 2011 at the 2011 Other Minds Festival in San Francisco. In his program notes Jaffe wrote that the piece "explores what can be communicated and what must remain unsaid as eight isolated string players embedded in the audience, and one percussionist alone on stage, reach out to one another.". Reviews of the concert can be found at the following references: and.
Impossible Animals and other works influenced by the natural world
Jaffe is an avid birder and has incorporated elements of bird-song and bird behavior into many of his works. Perhaps the most involved example is Impossible Animals in which the song of a Winter Wren (the bird with the longest song of any North American bird) was subjected to an extensive analysis and resynthesis procedure and eventually rendered as a human voice with vowels derived from the pitch trajectory. This procedure is described in Jaffe's article Impossible Animals, Notes on birds and musical style, published in 1995 in Perspectives of New Music.Other nature-inspired pieces include Territory for two violins, Bird Seasons for four voices, Whoop For Your Life! for orchestra and Bristlecone Concerto for violin and ensemble (also versions for violin, mandolin, ensemble and computer-generated tape; and mandolin and computer-generated tape.)
Music and Audio Software
From 1988 to 1991, Jaffe worked at Steve Job's start-up company NeXT, developing music software for the NeXT ComputerNeXT Computer
The NeXT Computer was a high-end workstation computer developed, manufactured and sold by Steve Jobs' company NeXT from 1988 until 1990. It ran the Unix-based NeXTSTEP operating system. The NeXT Computer was packaged in a 1-foot die-cast magnesium cube-shaped case, which led to the machine being...
. As the first computer to ship with a DSP capable of real-time sound synthesis, Jaffe and Julius Smith collaborated to create a programmable environment called the Music Kit, which fused elements of Music 5 and MIDI in an object-oriented environment.
In the mid-1990s, he developed the sound for games such as Welcome to West Feedback, and Quest for Fame, collaborating with bands such as Aerosmith, for the Boston-based company Ahead (later Virtual Music Entertainment). These games used a special guitar controller and pick called the "vPick", and were precursors to products such as Guitar Hero.
In the late 1990s, he was a co-founder of Staccato Systems, and developed the SynthCore sound engine. Staccato Systems was acquired by Analog Devices in 2001, where Jaffe continued as Chief Architect and developed SoundMAX (which has shipped on over 80 million PCs) and VisualAudio, presented at the 2006 Audio Engineering Society Conference in New York.
Since 2006, he has been Senior Scientist/Engineer at Universal Audio, where he developed the DSP system for the UAD-2 hardware, used to emulate classic analog hardware.
He has been awarded several patents, as well as awards from the Bourges Festival and the International Engineering Consortium.
Writings
Jaffe's writings have been published in Computer Music Journal, Interface, Leonardo Music Journal and Perspectives of New Music, and in the books “The Music Machine,” “The Well-Tempered Object,” and elsewhere. He was the Keynote Speaker at the conference of the Australian Computer Music Association in 1995 and has been an invited speaker at the Aspen Design Conference, the InStat MDR Microprocessor Forum, the USENIX Conference and elsewhere. He has given lectures and papers at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing in Tokyo, at Conferences of the Audio Engineering Society in New York and San Francisco, and at International Computer Music Conferences at the IRCAM studio in Paris, as well as in Venice, Aarhus (Denmark), Vancouver, Montreal, Banff, Scotland, Rochester, and Columbus.He has been a frequent Resident Artist at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and has done composing residencies at the Edna Saint Vincent Millay Colony and elsewhere. He has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the US Information Agency, the Goethe Foundation, the Presser Foundation, the Ross McGee Foundation, Meet-the-Composer and others.
Discography
Solo CDs on the Well-Tempered label:- Cluck Old Hen' Variations & other works for strings by David A. Jaffe, WTP 5198, 2011
- Wildlife' and other works combining instruments and computers, WTP 5199, 2011
- The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, WTP 5181, 1996
- XXIst century mandolin, acoustic and computer music for the mandolin by David A. Jaffe, WTP 5164, 1994. Includes the following works:
- "Grass Valley Fire", for mandolin quartet; The Modern Mandolin Quartet
- "Ellis Island Sonata", for mandolin; David A. Jaffe
- "American Miniatures", for computer-processed strings, voice and percussion.
- "Silicon Valley Breakdown"(revised version), for computer-generated sound.
Also works on the following compilation CDs:
- New Music for Orchestra—Music from Six Continents, Vienna Modern Masters VMM 3024, 1994. Includes Whoop for Your Life!, performed by the Krakow Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra
- The Digital Domain, 9 60303-2 Elektra/Asylum, 1983. Includes Finale from Silicon Valley Breakdown, for computer-generated sound.
- The Virtuoso in the Computer Age—V, CDCM Vol. 15, CRC 2190 Centaur, 1994. Includes Terra Non Firma, for four cellos and Mathews Radio Baton; also includes Wildlife, for Zeta violin, Radiodrum and two comptuers.
- CDCM Computer Music Series, Volume 8, CRC 2091, Centaur, 1991. Includes Telegram to the President, 1984, for string quartet and tape; Jefferson String Quartet.
- Dinosaur Music—Music by Chafe, Jaffe and Schottstaedt, WER 2016-50 Wergo, 1988. Includes Silicon Valley Breakdown for computer generated sound.
- The Concordia Archival Project Concordia University, Montreal. Includes Bristlecone Concerto III for mandolin, percussion and tape; David A. Jaffe, mandolin; Andrew Schloss, percussion.
- intercambio/exchange, computer music from Buenos Aires and California, CCRMA/LIPM/CRCA and the Rockefeller Foundation, 1994. Includes American Miniatures, for computer-processed voices, strings and percussion.
Also works on the following DVD:
- 2004 International Computer Music Conference DVD ICMA, 2004. Includes Racing Against Time, for two violins, two saxophones, piano and radiodrum-controlled electronics; Quarks! ensemble.
Orchestra, Concertos and Large Ensembles
| Date | |Remarks | |
|---|---|---|
| 1978 | A Beginning | for chamber orchestra |
| 1978 | Cryptogram | for small orchestra |
| 1978 | Celebration and Remembrance | for ten flutes |
| 1978 | Antinomies | for spatially separated soprano saxophone, timpani, string quartet and wind quarrtet |
| 1980 | Marketplace (a trip down Market Street on Sunday | a concerto for solo tenor saxophone, string orchestra, piano and three percussionists |
| 1980 | May All Your Children Be Acrobats | based on Carl Sandburg's The People, Yes, for mezzo-soprano, eight guitars and computer-generated tape |
| 1983 | Would You Just As Soon Sing As Make That Noise?! | a concerto for mandolin, violin and orchestra |
| 1983 | Bristlecone Concerto No. 1 | a concerto for violin and chamber orchestra |
| 1984 (revised 1990) | Wanting The Impossible (echoes of Ives' Unanswered Question | for baritone and small orchestra |
| 1983 | Bristlecone Concerto No. 2 | a concerto for mandolin, violin, chamber orchestra and computer-generated and -processed tape |
| 1987 | Whoop for Your Life! | for orchestra |
| 1988 | Kangaroos | for mandolin orchestra |
| 1995 | The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World | a concerto for Radiodrum-performed Disklavier, and an orchestra of plucked strings and percussion |
| 1998 | Other Worlds—an homage to Carl Sagan | a concerto for Zeta electronic/MIDI violin and symphonic band |
| 2008 | SF Itinerary | for string orchestra |
| 2010 | Congregations | for eight cellos |
| 2010 | The Space Between Us | for two string quartets and Radiodrum-performed Disklavier and Trimpin instruments (18 chimes, 2 xylophones and glockenspiel) |
Vocal and Choral Music
| Date | |Remarks | |
|---|---|---|
| 1980 | May All Your Children Be Acrobats | based on Carl Sandburg's The People, Yes, for mezzo-soprano, eight guitars and computer-generated tape |
| 1984 | Bird Seasons | for solo voices or chamber chorus |
| 1986 | Impossible Animals | for chorus and computer-generated voices (also version for SATB soloists and computer voices) |
| 1986 | The Fishing Trip | for twelve-voice male chorus and computer-generated and -processed tape |
| 1990 | Grass | (based on the poem by Carl Sandburg) for female chorus and tape |
| 1990 | Number Man (for the ghost of J.S. Bach) | (based on a poem by Carl Sandburg) a cantata for oboe/E.H. and solo voices with optional chorus |
| 1984 (revised 1990) | Wanting The Impossible (echoes of Ives' Unanswered Question) | for baritone and small orchestra |
| 1990 | Beacons of the Sky | for chorus and percussion |
| 1991 | Man Meets Dog (how it all began) | for small male chorus and large chorus |
| 1988 | Songs of California | (based on the words of Juniperro Serra, Collis P. Huntington, Ishi, Joe Hill, Cesar Chavez, and John Muir) an acapella cantata for twelve singers |
Chamber and Solo Music (without Electronics or Computers)
| Date | |Remarks | |
|---|---|---|
| 1978 | Territory | a spatial work for two violins |
| 1978 | Glacial Erratic | for two flutes, piano, clarinet, violin and cello |
| 1978 | View from Egg Rock | for violin, viola and cello |
| 1978 | Sunday at Bean Blossom | for violin, harpsichord, mandolin, cello, percussion and guitar |
| 1979 | Music for an Imaginary Wedding | for mandolin, concertina and cello |
| 1979 | Tableau | for two flutes with optional lights |
| 1979 | City Life | for mandolin, guitar, 5-string banjo, and harpsichord |
| 1979 | Yellow Moon Over June Day | for solo soprano recorder |
| 1979 | Composition in Red, Yellow and Blue | for piano |
| 1979 | Descent Into Flatland | for brass quintet |
| 1980 | How They Broke Away to Go to the Rootabaga Country' | for solo performer who acts, sings and plays violin |
| 1980 | A Little Kid Sees a Skyscraper | for two quarter-tone-tuned guitars |
| 1980 | Generation Upon Generation | for woodwind quintet |
| 1980 | Dybbuk | for clarinet, two violins, viola, piano and offstage mandolin |
| 1981 | Damp Nights in Drafty Motels | for bassoon and bass |
| 1981 | Summit Meeting | a spatial negotiation for cello, violin and trap set |
| 1981 | Two Pieces on Poetry by Natasha Barovsky-Hidalgo | for cello and narrator |
| 1981 | Three Musicians (after the Picasso paintings) | for viola and guitar |
| 1982 | String Quartet for Two Instruments | for violin and viola |
| 1985 | Telegram to the President | for string quartet and computer-generated tape |
| 1985 | Ellis Island Sonata | for mandolin |
| 1988 | Heartland Horizon | for string trio |
| 1988 | Grass Valley Fire, 1988 | for two mandolins, mandola and mando-cello; also version for string quartet |
| 1992 | No Trumpets, No Drums | for organ, trombone and percussion |
| 1994 | Impossible Animals (instrumental versions) | for five winds and computer-generated voices. Also versions for violin and computer-generated voices, oboe and computer-generated voices and trombone and computer-generated voices. |
| 1996 | Quiet Places | for string quartet |
| 1997 | Havana Dreams | for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and percussion |
| 1999 | Bull's Eye | for violin, cello and African percussion |
| 2001 | Racing Against Time | for two violins, two saxophones, piano and Radiodrum-controlled sound (physical models of strings, race cars and jet planes and more, generated by the SynthCore synthesis engine) |
| 2003 | Who's on First? | for five double basses |
| 2003 | Maravillas (Marvels) | for nine remote controlled toy pianos (by Trimpin) controlled by Radiodrum (co-composed with Andrew Schloss) |
| 2004 | Cluck Old Hen Variations | for violin |
| 2005 | La Brea (the tar) | for string quartet |
| 2006 | Underground Economy | an interactive work for Cuban improvising pianist, violinist and radiodrum |
| 2007 | MahaDeviBot Variations | for Radiodrum-controlled robotic percussion (co-composed with Andrew Schloss) |
| 2009 | The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo | for mandolin and mando-cello |
Chamber Music with Recorded Electronics or Computer
| Date | |Remarks | |
|---|---|---|
| 1980 | May All Your Children Be Acrobats | (based on The People, Yes, by Carl Sandburg) for mezzo-soprano, eight guitars and computer-generated tape |
| 1984 | Bristlecone Concerto No. 2 | a double concerto for violin, mandolin, chamber orchestra and computer-generated and -processed tape |
| 1984 | Bristlecone Concerto No. 3 | for mandolin and computer-generated and -processed tape, with bongos obligato |
| 1985 | Telegram to the President | for string quartet and computer-generated tape |
| 1986–1994 | Impossible Animals | for chorus and computer-generated voices. Also version for SATB soloists and computer-generated voices (1989); version for violin and computer-generated voices (1989); version for oboe and computer-generated voices (1990); version for five winds and tape (1994). |
| 1986 | The Fishing Trip | for twelve-voice male chorus and computer-generated and -processed tape |
| 1987 | Grass | (based on the poem by Carl Sandburg) for female chorus or three soloists and computer-generated tape |
| 2004 | Impossible Animals, 2004 | for trombone and computer-generated voices |
Chamber Music with Interactive Electronics or Computers
| Date | |Remarks | |
|---|---|---|
| 1991 | Wildlife | an interactive computer piece for two players, playing Zeta electroinc/MIDI violin and radiodrum and two computers |
| 1991 | Gregorian Variations | an interactive computer piece for Zeta electronic/MIDI violin and NeXT Computer |
| 1992 | Terra Non Firma | for four cellos and Radiodrum-conducted electronic orchestra |
| 1995 | The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World | a concerto for Radiodrum-performed Disklavier, harpsichord, harp, mandolin, guitar, bass, harmonium and two percussionists |
| 1996 | Cadenzas from The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World aka Suite from the Seven Wonders | for Radiodrum-performed Disklavier |
| 1998 | Other Worlds—an homage to Carl Sagan | a concerto for Zeta electronic/MIDI violin and symphonic band |
| 1999 | Wildlife II | an interactive computer piece for Radiodrum and Zeta electronic/MIDI violin (co-composed with Andrew Schloss) |
| 2001 | Racing Against Time | for two violins, two saxophones, piano and Radiodrum-controlled sound (physical models of strings, car engines, jet planes and more, generated by the SynthCore synthesis engine) |
| 2006 | Underground Economy | an interactive work for Cuban improvising pianist, violinist and radiodrum |
| 2007 | MahaDeviBot Variations | for Radiodrum-controlled robotic percussionist (co-composed with Andrew Schloss) |
| 2007 | Celebration, for Max Mathews' 80th Birthday | for two radiodrum-controlled Disklaviers and computer graphics by Randal Jones |
Computer and Electronic Music for Tape Alone
| Date | |Remarks | |
|---|---|---|
| 1978 | Straying | for stereo electronic tape (Moog Synthesizer) |
| 1980 | A Sleeping Circus Animal's Perspective | for four-channel computer-generated tape (Systems Concept Digital Synthesizer)) |
| 1982 | Silicon Valley Breakdown | for four-channel computer-generated tape (Systems Concept Digital Synthesizer) |
| 1992 | Schumann Variations | for computer-generated tape (co-composed with Christopher Penrose) (software sound processing) |
| 1992 | American Miniatures | for computer-processed drums, voices and strings (software sound processing) |