Tinman

by David Cope

"Offering insight into the creative processes of a contemporary composer, Tinman presents 150 vignettes from author David Cope's life. Some of the notable individuals discussed in this innovative biography are John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Aaron Copland, Warren Zevon, Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, Douglas Hofstadter, Arthur Knight, Danny Glover, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Dorothy Freeman, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Philip José Farmer. Tinman offers a fond music journey including two encounters with Bach, Rachmaninoff's classic ""Prelude in C-sharp minor,"" Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Pierre Boulez, and the sadness of Igor Stravinsky's death.

The title, borrowed from L. Frank Baum's book The Wizard of Oz, is an aphorism affectionately attached to Cope in the late 1990s. The reference reflects the many attitudes about his work with his computer music program, Experiments in Musical Intelligence; critics felt the results of this program lack heart.

Though Tinman covers many other aspects of Cope's life-from his love of the cello, to his days as a graduate student at the University of Southern California, and to his work as a composer, author, and teacher-the main theme centers on his search for self-identity."

457 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 4, 2008

About the author

David “Dave” Cope was an American author, composer, scientist, and Dickerson Emeriti Professor of Music at UC Santa Cruz. His primary area of research involved artificial intelligence and music; he wrote programs and algorithms that can analyze existing music and create new compositions in the style of the original input music. He taught the groundbreaking summer workshop in Workshop in Algorithmic Computer Music (WACM) that was open to the public as well as a general education course entitled Artificial Intelligence and Music for enrolled UCSC students. Cope was also co-founder and CTO Emeritus of Recombinant Inc., a music technology company.