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Computer music is any music in which computers
are used to transmit musical instructions to electronic instruments
or live performers. These instructions are transmitted in
the form of electrical impulses, which are, in turn, reproduced
as sounds.
Max V. Mathews, an electrical engineer, established the pioneering
computer music project at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill,
N. J., in 1957. Intrigued by the relationship between number
and tone in Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone piano music, Mathews
began to work on computer music.
In the classic computer music studio, the following series
of events (direct synthesis) occurs. These procedures are
still used, though many others have become available to computer
composers in the last 30 years. (1) The composer programs
instructions to a computer in a language that it understands.
This is usually done through a console (often an alphanumeric
keyboard). Input media may include cards, paper tapes, magnetic
tapes, and magnetic disks. (2) The instructions are converted
to numbers. (3) The computer performs the functions that the
composer has requested. (4) A digital-to-analog converter
converts the resultant information to varying voltages. (5)
These voltages drive one or more loudspeakers, thus creating
sound A more recently developed computer compositional technique,
analysis-based synthesis, is exemplified by Charles Dodge's
In Celebration (1975). A spoken text is recorded digitally.
The digitized speech information is analyzed, and the resultant
information is used to recombine the speech sounds. Thus,
the computer both analyzes and synthesizes sounds.
In concrete computer music, acoustic sounds, natural or human-made,
are digitally recorded, then modified by the computer in a
manner similar to tape manipulation in concrete music (musique
concrete). Composing of this kind has been made much easier
by the increasing availability and portability of digital
computers.
The growing sophistication of real-time ("live")
computer performance techniques has freed computer music from
unconditional bondage to the studio. The large computer music
centers, however, remain important for both composition and
research. Twenty years after the inception of the Bell Laboratories
project, Pierre BOULEZ's Institut de Recherche et de Coordination
Acoustique Musique (IRCAM) was inaugurated in Paris. Significant
work in computerized music is also being done at many U. S.
universities, including Princeton, Stanford, Illinois, and
the University of California at San Diego. Some composers
of computer music are Milton BABBITT, Herbert Brun, John CAGE,
John Chowning, Emmanuel Ghent, Julia Morrison, Dika Newlin,
Laurie Spiegel, Morton Subotnick, James Tenney, and Yannis
XENAKIS.
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