Held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Brazilian Computer Society, to which the Brazilian Group for Computer Music Research is affiliated, the Seventh Brazilian Symposium on Computer Music took place at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná from 17 to 20 July 2000 and sought to highlight aesthetic, historical, theoretical, sociological and critical aspects of digital musics. For the present issue of the Electronic Musicological Review, Giselle Ferreira, Eduardo Miranda and Carlos Palombini have selected eight papers they deem representative of  what has become known, in computer and electroacoustic music circles, as “the Brazilian Symposium”.

Arcela introduces a method for setting up virtual sound installations that use tree-like structures to represent sounds in a three-dimensional space. Bakhmutova, Gusev and Titkova address the problem of differentiating melodies according to “nationality”, with the use of a system that represents them in terms of repetitions. Bearing in mind the limitations imposed by the use of instrument-based descriptions of sounds in computer synthesis, Correa, Miranda and Wright propose an alternative taxonomy for sounds produced by granular synthesis. Dovicchi explores a set of new wavelet coefficients that he applies to the analysis of bassoon and French horn sounds, discussing the potential of the method for sound synthesis. Keller outlines a theoretical framework for ecologically-based composition. Lazzarini presents a collection of object-oriented synthesis and processing programming routines, illustrating their use in the development of actual applications. Palombini draws on Barthes to compare electroacoustic music and its associated musicology as Texts. Riddell offers an insider’s view of the generation whose culture is data, and of the rise of process as an aesthetics of data.

The guest editors wish to take this opportunity to express their gratitude towards the EMR editorial staff — and towards Rogério Budasz in particular — for their continued support and assistance in the preparation of this issue. As this “volume” “goes to press”, a proto-history of the “Brazilian group” is appearing in the tenth issue of the Leonardo Music Journal, the “Southern Cones” issue.