Computer Music

Broadly speaking, computer music is music made with the aid of computers. Computer music can refer to the use of computers to compose music, perform compositions, or synthesize sounds. In its earliest incarnations, the mere fact of a computer being involved in the compositional process was significant. Today, computers are widely used in almost all aspects of the composition and performance of music. Where computer music once represented a very specialized form of composition and/or performance, today the fact of computer use is not itself as significant as the ways in which musicians and performers use computers.

By the 1950s, computers were becoming advanced and powerful enough that people could begin to use them for the purposes of creating music. An employee of AT&T's Bell Laboratories named Max Matthews (who would later invent the modular telephone jack) began experimenting with various programming protocols. His first program, MUSIC, was able to play about 17 seconds of a single line of notes on an IBM 704 mainframe computer in 1957. Matthews went through four more versions of his music program, adding multiple parts and more complex functions. As Matthews wrote, the computers on which these early applications ran “were strictly studio machines. They were far too slow to synthesize music in real time.” It took about an hour of processing time to generate a minute of music, and the tone was similar to the sounds of a watch or cellular telephone today. “The timbres and notes were not inspiring,” wrote Matthews, “but the breakthrough was inspiring.”

Also in 1957, University of Illinois scientist and composer Lejaren Hiller began using computers to compose music. His first piece, “Illiac Suite” (named for the kind of computer that it used), was composed for string quartet. This work led to further research in what became known as computer-assisted composition.

Early computer-music facilities were usually housed at universities, and structured around a large mainframe computer. One notable exception to the academic orientation of computer music was the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), founded in Paris in 1976 by composers Pierre Boulex and Jean Claude Risset with the help of the French government. IRCAM has been an important global center for avant-garde computer music ever since.

By the late 1960s, analog synthesizers had become more widely available to musicians, and Matthews and other programmers created ways to control analog synthesizers with computers. These control devices, which were known as sequencers, could tell a [Page 89]synthesizer what notes to play and in what order, allowing synthesizers to perform “automatically.” More elaborate sequencers required more elaborate control circuits, which led sequencer designers to new microprocessor circuits.

When home computers like the Apple II became available in the late 1970s, musicians quickly wrote programs for controlling their synthesizers. As computers moved out of university laboratories and into private homes, computer music moved from an avant-garde academic enterprise to a wider group of performers and listeners who were not affiliated with large research institutions.

As microprocessors caught the interest of musicians attempting to automate their synthesizers, they also caught the attention of John Chowning, a Stanford University researcher who hoped to create a fully digital synthesizer. Chowning used the same principles as FM radio (Frequency Modulation) for computer-generated sound. Stanford actually denied him tenure for this work, and it wasn't until 1976 that a commercial synthesizer manufacturer—Yamaha—became interested in FM synthesis. Seven years later, in 1983, Yamaha released the DX-7, the first fully digital synthesizer. It sold more than 200,00 units, more than any synthesizer before or since, and it can be heard on countless popular recordings from the 1980s. Just before the release of the DX-7, a group of musical instrument manufacturers met to establish the Musical Instrument Digital Interface standard (MIDI), to allow different pieces of digital audio equipment to communication with one another. MIDI is still in use today.

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