musicus.io: a site by reiner krämer

Reiner Krämer is a teacher, music theorist, composer, programmer, digital humanist, entrepreneur, runner, and telemark skier, currently residing in the beautiful state of Colorado.

Reiner earned a Ph.D. in Music Theory with a related field in Computer Music Composition from the University of North Texas (UNT) College of Music, and worked for the SIMSSA project as Julie E. Cumming’s Postdoctoral Researcher within the Music Technology and Musicology department at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music. While in Montréal, Reiner was a member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT).

Reiner teaches music theory and composition at the University of Northern Colorado’s School of Music. At McGill University, Reiner led and mentored an interdisciplinary research team of undergraduate and graduate students (The SIMSSA Project). Reiner taught courses in Music Appreciation, Music Arranging, Music Technology, the History of Rock Music, and Music Theory at Northeastern State University, as well as courses in New Media, Music Technology, and Music Theory at UNT. Reiner was a researcher at the Hybrid Arts Lab as part of the Initiative for Advanced Research in Technology and the Arts (IARTA) at UNT.

Reiner has presented research outcomes in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, and Japan. Reiner has published on music encoding, tuning systems, computational models of Renaissance music analysis, the Chicago-based post-rock band Tortoise, Astor Piazzolla’s fugues, and contributed to David Lewin’s “Morgengruß“ (Oxford University Press). Reiner is currently completing a monograph on conducting computer-aided post-tonal music analysis, exploring alternate tuning systems in Rock music, and applying meaningful AI techniques to his compositions.

The majority of Reiner’s compositions center around audio/visual improvisations at live performances. To create improvisations Reiner builds music instruments in form of software for computers, and other programmable devices, using a variety of programming languages and platforms. Titles of the compositions provide the themes on which improvisations are to be mediated/meditated upon. Some compositions will feature laptop(s), and yet other pieces include interactions with traditional instruments, and/or non-traditional instruments, and their corresponding operating musicians. Themes provide unity for the improvisations, and the themes continue to be recognized as such every performance, although musical materials may differ substantially. In a way individual compositions assume audio, or audio/visual Gestalten that require to be experienced in order to be perceived. Only the experience of the now counts, as it is a reflection of the ephemeral nature of time based art/sound art, mirroring the reality of existence.

As a practicing musician, Reiner uses the laptop computer with or without connected HIDs (Human Interface Devices, such as but not limited to midi controllers) as music instruments. Reiner also plays keyboard, saxophone, clarinet, flute, electric bass, the theremin, and EWI. He has performed at the Unviversity of North Texas, UNT on the Square, OK Electric Festival, Crested Butte Music Festival, the Dairy Arts Center, KNGU, Studio Z, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and elsewhere.

In a previous life Reiner sang and played saxophone in a rock band and lived in a van touring venues throughout Texas, the Midwest, and the Southern U.S., although he still sings a lot teaching aural skills courses, practices a lot of keyboard for his theory courses, and scares his neighbors with his avantgarde saxophone sounds.