Sync or Swarm
Winner of the 2006 Alan Merriam Prize
from the Society for Ethnomusicology
“What makes this book uniquely compelling is the way Borgo uses ideas, images and sounds together to create a living picture of very specific musical examples, while at the same time guiding the reader through the theoretical, almost metaphysical aspects of the science of complexity. He does it with relaxed clarity and with heart. The book moves between scientific analysis (fractal sonograms), personal reflections of the artists, philosophical perspectives on the art or science at hand, and practical issues of complex improvised music... Depending on your orientation to the subject, this book can be either a scientific study full of artistic statements and reflections, or a philosophical consideration of one of the modern creative arts, bolstered by compelling and fascinating scientific analysis. If it were solely one or the other, it would be an important book. But it is surely both, and that makes it an indispensable book for anyone serious about understanding what has happened, and is happening, in creative improvised music. Highly recommended.”
– Joe Giardullo in The International Society for Improvised Music Newsletter
“One of the major strengths of the book is Mr. Borgo’s ability to summarize the issues and insights of dynamical systems theory and other recent developments in cognitive, biological, and computer sciences for the scientific layperson. Clear and concise explanations with just enough detail to flesh out the concepts make for a reasonable understanding of the significance of the theory in question and serve as entry into the author’s application of it to the field of improvised music... Mr. Borgo’s facility with the concepts and vocabulary, as well as his novel and creative applications of them to musical improvisation, are commendable... On the whole, there is much to recommend in this book.”
– Steven M. Miller in Computer Music Journal
"[I]t is perhaps Borgo's own practice as a musician that lends the book its most astonishing qualities: a sweeping knowledge of jazz, improvisatory, and experimental music, discrete attention to the numerous nuances that are involved in improvising music, an unabashed enthusiam for the ways in which various developments in cognitive neuroscience or the mathematics of chaos theory can help us understand music in its most complex dynamics, and a deep concern for pedagogical issues.”
– Brian A. Smith in Symploké
“... the concepts are clearly thought out in impeccable detail and thoroughly researched... a dedicated reader can tease out some thought-provoking ideas here.”
– Michael Rosenstein in Cadence Magazine
I am pleased to have had my work subjected to such rigorous scrutiny and I appreciate all the thinking David Borgo has done in an area where it is almost impossible to make any single uncontested statement!
– Evan Parker, saxophonist/improviser/composer
Integrating a broad range of interdisciplinary considerations – from complex systems and sociological theories to cognition and consciousness – saxophonist/composer/scholar David Borgo's Sync or Swarm makes important contributions to the expanding dialogue about contemporary improvised music.
– Ed Sarath, Professor and Chair of the Department of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation,
Director of the Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Getting excited while you are READING about MUSIC may be common to ethno-musicologists. But for me (a cognitive and computer scientist), music generally lives in one part of my brain while scientific/academic work lives in another. David Borgo's Sync or Swarm successfully lights up both sides of my brain!
– Richard K. Belew, Professor and Chair, Cognitive Science Department, UC San Diego
Not only is this an important book for specialists working in areas of both contemporary music and contemporary science, but it also offers absorbing reading to improvising musicians, their listeners, and the growing cadre of smart, engaged folks fascinated by the human implications of "complex" music, chaos theory, and other once-foreboding realms.
– David Ake, Professor of Music, Case Western University; author of Jazz Cultures
Borgo is familiar with a wide range of the recent literature on complexity, chaos, embodiment, etc. and he's done a creative job of bringing that into his main topic: free-jazz group improvisation.
– R. Keith Sawyer, author of Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation
A provocative, gutsy, and potentially revolutionary attempt to apply chaos theory, fractal plotting, sociological Actor-Network Theory, the concept of swarm intelligence, and other analytical templates to improvised music, wow!
– Christopher Delaurenti, The Stranger
Sync or Swarm is undoubtedly a seminal work in the study of music theory... Where Jacques Attali's Noise ends, this is one book that deserves to be understood as beginning in that very place, however different the theoretical models may seem.
– Brain A. Smith, Symploké
