ICMC BOSTON 2025
Online Listening Room
Curiosity, Play, Innovation - A 50th Anniversary Celebration of Creativity in Music, Science, and Technology
June 8-14, 2025
ICMC BOSTON 2025: Online Listening Room #4
ID#: 377
SplineKlang (2025) ; 6:00
by Greg Dixon & Matt Klassen
DigiPen Institute of Technology
“SplineKlang” is a musical collaboration between Matt Klassen and Greg Dixon that originates with the spline modeling synthesis methodologies developed by Klassen. The project evolved out of creative meetings where Klassen shared his synthesis research with Dixon and the two composers outlined ways that the work could be used in a composition. There were three distinct phases to the spline modeling process: 1) tone and timbre development through modeling of monophonic instrument sounds with cycle interpolation, 2) melodic contour generation from spline models of cycles, and 3) polyphonic cycle generation of new tones which fed back into the previous two phases. The third phase grew out of some ideas and questions of Dixon’s, which inspired Klassen to generate new materials focusing on the novel approach of polyphonic cycles. The collaborators recognized that there was an enormous array of possibilities for development of musical material from just a few audio samples. The resulting work develops these sounds in a variety of ways using classic compositional techniques such as pitch transposition, time reversal, creative mixing, time stretching and time compression. The work also explores granular synthesis processing to obtain a wide variety of sounds from this minimal set of samples.
Greg Dixon
Greg Dixon works as Assistant Professor of Music and Sound Design at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, WA, where he teaches courses in game audio, audio engineering, sound design, and music composition. Greg holds a Ph.D. in composition with a specialization in computer music from the University of North Texas, where he worked at the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia (CEMI). His research is primarily focused on interactive audio systems for video games, installations, concerts, and other forms of interactive media. He has helped create hundreds of published recordings spanning many genres as a performer and technician; including extensive work as a recording, mix, and mastering engineer. Greg worked as sound designer / re-recording mixer for the cinematic cutscenes for Mario Vs. Donkey Kong for the Nintendo Switch and he crafted sound designs and music compositions for the collectible card game, Runestrike, by Making Fun Games.
Matt Klassen
Matt Klassen specialized in number theory and algebraic geometry during his doctoral studies at UofA in Tucson. Since joining DigiPen in 1999, he has focused on mathematics relating to computer graphics and geometric modeling with splines. He developed courses on quaternions for computer graphics, and geometric modeling. In 2011 Klassen designed two new programs at DigiPen, in Music and Sound Design, and CS for Digital Audio. He teaches courses in Math of Music and Digital Signal Processing. In 2018, Klassen offered a course on Computation and Modeling of Head-Related Transfer Functions,” which explored methods of spatial sound processing with applications for virtual and augmented reality. In August 2018 Klassen chaired the AES conference “Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality,” hosted by DigiPen. Klassen participates in MCM conferences with papers in 2019 – 2024 on topics such as Transformational Music Theory and Spline Modeling of Audio Signals.
* winner, Berklee College of Music internal music composition competition for ICMC Boston 2025
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