Laurie Spiegel facts for kids

Laurie Spiegel in an electronic music studio

Laurie Spiegel (born September 20, 1945) is an American composer. She is well-known for her electronic music and for creating computer software. One of her most famous creations is a program called Music Mouse. She has also worked in computer graphics and plays the guitar and lute.

A piece of her music, based on Johannes Kepler's ideas about the universe, was chosen for the "Sounds of Earth" section of the Voyager Golden Record. This record was sent into space on the Voyager spacecraft. Her song "Sediment" from 1972 was also featured in The Hunger Games movie in 2012.

Laurie Spiegel has been honored by being included in the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Becoming a Musician

Laurie Spiegel started her musical journey by teaching herself. As a child, she played the mandolin, guitar, and banjo by ear. She became interested in electronics after visiting Purdue University with her high school class. There, she used a computer that worked with tape.

When she was 20, she learned how to read and write music. After that, she began writing down her own songs.

College and Early Studies

Spiegel went to Shimer College in Naperville, Illinois, through a special program for younger students. She then spent a year studying at the University of Oxford in England. After getting her degree in sociology in 1967, she stayed in Oxford for another year. During this time, she traveled to London to study guitar, music theory, and composition with John W. Duarte.

Later, she moved to Manhattan. She briefly worked in social science research and making documentary films. From 1969 to 1972, she studied composition at the Juilliard School. She also had private lessons with Emmanuel Ghent. Laurie Spiegel felt different from other students at Juilliard. She was interested in the feelings and structure of music. This was different from the popular "blip and bleep" music style taught there.

However, she made good connections outside of school. She worked in shared music studios in New York. One of these was the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Her composition teacher helped her get access to this center.

She later became an assistant to her teacher, Jacob Druckman. She followed him to Brooklyn College. There, she earned her master's degree in composition in 1975. She also researched early American music.

Her Work and Creations

Laurie Spiegel is best known for using algorithmic composition in her music. This means she uses special rules or computer programs to create music. She worked with different types of synthesizers and digital systems. These included Bell Labs' GROOVE system (1973–1978) and the Bell Labs Digital Synthesizer (1977). She also used the alphaSyntauri system for the Apple II computer (1978–1981).

Algorithmic Music

In her music, Spiegel used algorithms to copy natural sounds. She also used them to follow old rules of tonal harmony. Sometimes, she even turned large sets of data into sounds. For example, in her piece Viroid, she used the genetic code of a simple organism. This code helped decide the notes played by a synthesizer.

In her 1977 piece Improvisation on a Concerto Generator, she used an algorithm. This algorithm was designed to sound like Bach's "chorale-style harmonic progressions." Spiegel sees algorithmic music as a natural step from traditional music rules. She believes it helps her focus on the parts of music that cannot be explained by logic.

Many of Spiegel's non-algorithmic songs also use rules, like algorithms. She says that putting these rules into computer code was a natural way for her to express herself musically.

Music Mouse Software

Spiegel's most famous and widely used software is Music Mouse (1986). She called it an "intelligent instrument." It was made for Macintosh, Amiga, and Atari computers. She used Music Mouse to create many pieces. These include "Cavis muris" (1986), "Three Sonic Spaces" (1989), and "Sound Zones" (1990). She kept updating the program, and it was still available for download in 2012.

Other Creative Works

Besides electronic and computer music, Spiegel has written music for piano, guitar, and small orchestras. She has also created drawings, photographs, and video art. In the visual arts, Spiegel wrote one of the first drawing programs at Bell Labs. In the mid-1970s, she made it even better. It could then include interactive video and sound at the same time.

Spiegel was a video artist at the Experimental Television Lab at WNET Thirteen in New York (1976). She created music for their weekly TV show, "VTR—Video and Television Review." She also made special sound effects for their science fiction film The Lathe of Heaven.

From the early 1970s, Spiegel also supported herself by teaching. She also composed music for movie soundtracks. She worked for various film companies and individual artists. Spiegel loves emotional music. She said that when you make soundtracks, "all that really matters is emotional content."

In the 1980s, she focused on making music software and advising on music technology. She also taught at Cooper Union and New York University. In 2018, she received an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

In 2018, Spiegel's early work, Music for New Electronic Media, was part of an exhibition in Chicago. In 2023, she won a major award for electronic music from the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. This award was for all her work throughout her life. In 2018, she started to digitally save all her creations.

Her Impact and Causes

Laurie Spiegel has written about how important it is to be able to change musical patterns in computer music programs. Her ideas have influenced how some "live coding" music software is designed.

Animal Rights

Spiegel is a strong supporter of animal rights. She has worked to help "underprivileged and disparaged" animals in cities. These include mice, rats, and pigeons. She learned to care for pigeons in college. After the September 11 attacks, she started helping injured birds in Tribeca.

Since 2004, Spiegel has regularly fed local pigeons. She wants them to have healthy meals. As of 2024, she still feeds pigeons almost every day in Manhattan's Duane Park.

To raise awareness for animal rights, Spiegel has created several artworks about urban wildlife. One important work is Ferals (2006). This was an audio-visual art show. It featured over 3,000 photos of New York City pigeons. It also had pigeon sounds that told the story of "two hungry juvenile pigeons begging their parents for food." Other works about animal rights include Anon a Mouse (2003), a short "opera" with a human, a dog, and a mouse. Also, Cavis Muris (1986) tried to make sounds that showed the mice in her warehouse.

Making Music Accessible

Spiegel also believes that music should be available to everyone. She says that making music more accessible is "one of the greatest gratifications of my own work." She thinks that computer music tools, like her Music Mouse software, can make it easier and cheaper to create music. This helps remove barriers that have historically made music production difficult. She believes these tools have already helped more women composers and other groups get involved in the music industry.

Music Albums

• The Expanding Universe, 1980. This album was re-released in 2012 with more songs.
• 60x60 (2006-2007), released 2008. This is a two-CD collection of 60-second songs from the 60x60 project.
• Ooppera, 2002. Spiegel contributed to this album of short operas by different artists.
• Harmonices Mundi (1977, released 2004). This music is based on Kepler's ideas about how planets move.
• The P-ART Project - 12 Portraits, 2001. A collection of songs by 12 composers, including Spiegel's "Conversational Paws".
• Obsolete Systems, 1991. This album looks back at Spiegel's work from the 1970s and 1980s. The songs were made using old electronic instruments.
• Ohm: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music, 2000. A 3-CD collection featuring Spiegel's 1974 song Appalachian Grove.
• Miniatures 2 - a sequence of sixty tiny masterpieces, 2000. A collection of songs by 60 artists for a video called A Volume of Julia Sets.
• Female of the Species. A 2-CD collection of experimental music by women composers.
• Enhanced Gravity, 1999. Spiegel contributed to this album of music and multimedia by ten artists.
• Cocks Crow, Dogs Bark: New Compositional Intentions, 1998. This CD came with a music journal and features The Unquestioned Answer.
• Women in Electronic Music - 1977, 1977, re-released 1998. A collection of electronic music by women.
• Computer Music Journal Sound Anthology, 1996. This CD came with the 20th Anniversary Issue of Computer Music Journal.
• Unseen Worlds, 1991, re-released 1994 and 2019. This album features songs by Laurie Spiegel.
• The Virtuoso in the Computer Age - III, 1993. A collection of songs by four electronic artists, including Spiegel's Cavis Muris (1986).
• Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, 1992. This album contains music from the "Sounds of Earth" record sent on the Voyager spacecraft. It includes a part of Harmonices Mundi.
• New American Music Vol. 2. An old LP record that is no longer printed.
• The Expanding Universe, 1980. This album has 4 songs made using the GROOVE system at Bell Labs. It was re-released in 2012 with more songs.
• Music for New Electronic Media, 1977. Early works by several electronic composers.

See also

In Spanish: Laurie Spiegel para niños