Curtis Roads (born May 9, 1951) is an American composer, author and computer programmer. He composes electronic and electroacoustic music, specializing in granular and pulsar synthesis.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio,^[1] Roads studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts and the University of California San Diego. He is former chair and current vice chair of the Media Arts and Technology Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara.^[2] He has previously taught at the University of Naples^[2] "Federico II", Harvard University,^[2] Oberlin Conservatory, Les Ateliers UPIC (now CCMIX, Center for the Composition of Music Iannis Xenakis),^[2] and the University of Paris^[2] VIII.

He co-founded the International Computer Music Association in 1980 and edited the Computer Music Journal from 1978–2000.^[2] He has created software including PulsarGenerator and the Creatovox, both with Alberto de Campo.

Since 2004, he has been researching a new method of sound analysis called atomic decompositions, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF).^[2]

The first movement of his composition Clang-Tint, "Purity", uses intervals from the Bohlen–Pierce scale.^[3]

• Roads, Curtis (2015). Composing Electronic Music. Oxford University Press.
• Roads, Curtis (2001). Microsound. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-18215-7
• Roads, Curtis (1996). The Computer Music Tutorial. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-68082-3
• Roads, Curtis, Pope, Stephen Travis, Piccialli, Aldo and De Poli, Giovanni, eds (1997). Musical Signal Processing. Routledge. ISBN 90-265-1483-2
• Roads, Curtis and Strawn, John, eds (1987). Foundations of Computer Music. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-68051-3

• POINT LINE CLOUD (2005) @Asphodel (Excerpt @ youtube)
• Half-life (1998–1999)
• Clang-Tint (1991–1994)
• nscor (1980)

• Artist page
• Wired.com article by Eliot Van Buskirk Hear Curtis Roads’ Subatomic Pop Symphonies (May 5 2008), accessed 16 February 2010
• moderecords.com profile Archived July 29, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
• Asphodel artist page

v t e Computer music
People	Marc Battier Richard Boulanger David Cope John Chowning Giuseppe di Giugno Charles Dodge Gottfried Michael Koenig Paul Lansky Max Mathews Gérard Pape Miller Puckette Roger Reynolds Jean-Claude Risset Curtis Roads Laurie Spiegel The Hub Trimpin Barry Vercoe Iannis Xenakis
Programs and instruments	ChucK Cmix Composers Desktop Project Csound FAUST HMSL Kyma Laptop orchestra Max/MSP MIDI controller Music Mouse Pure Data MUSIC-N Radiodrum Riffusion Sonic Pi SuperCollider TidalCycles UPIC
Places	Bell Labs CCRMA CEMAMu Computer Music Center at Columbia Experimental Music Studios ICEM ICMA IRCAM Center for New Music and Audio Technologies Princeton Sound Lab Oberlin TIMARA Labs IEM
Techniques	Algorithmic composition Artificial intelligence Sound synthesis Digital synthesis
Compositions	Illiac Suite Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco

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