Computer music

CSIRAC, Australia's first digital computer, as displayed at the Melbourne Museum

Much of the work on computer music has drawn on the relationship between music and mathematics, a relationship which has been noted since the Ancient Greeks described the "harmony of the spheres".

Musical melodies were first generated by the computer originally named the CSIR Mark 1 (later renamed CSIRAC) in Australia in 1950. There were newspaper reports from America and England (early and recently) that computers may have played music earlier, but thorough research has debunked these stories as there is no evidence to support the newspaper reports (some of which were obviously speculative). Research has shown that people speculated about computers playing music, possibly because computers would make noises,[1] but there is no evidence that they actually did it.[2][3]

The world's first computer to play music was the CSIR Mark 1 (later named CSIRAC), which was designed and built by Trevor Pearcey and Maston Beard from the late 1940s. Mathematician Geoff Hill programmed the CSIR Mark 1 to play popular musical melodies from the very early 1950s. In 1950 the CSIR Mark 1 was used to play music, the first known use of a digital computer for the purpose. The music was never recorded, but it has been accurately reconstructed.[4] [5] In 1951 it publicly played the "Colonel Bogey March"[6] of which only the reconstruction exists. However, the CSIR Mark 1 played standard repertoire and was not used to extend musical thinking or composition practice, as Max Mathews did, which is current computer-music practice.

The first music to be performed in England was a performance of the British National Anthem that was programmed by Christopher Strachey on the Ferranti Mark 1, late in 1951. Later that year, short extracts of three pieces were recorded there by a BBC outside broadcasting unit: the National Anthem, "Ba, Ba Black Sheep, and "In the Mood" and this is recognised as the earliest recording of a computer to play music as the CSIRAC music was never recorded. This recording can be heard at the this Manchester University site. Researchers at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch declicked and restored this recording in 2016 and the results may be heard on SoundCloud.[7][8][9]

Two further major 1950s developments were the origins of digital sound synthesis by computer, and of algorithmic composition programs beyond rote playback. Max Mathews at Bell Laboratories developed the influential MUSIC I program and its descendants, further popularising computer music through a 1963 article in Science.[10] Amongst other pioneers, the musical chemists Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson worked on a series of algorithmic composition experiments from 1956-9, manifested in the 1957 premiere of the Illiac Suite for string quartet.[11]

In Japan, experiments in computer music date back to 1962, when Keio University professor Sekine and Toshiba engineer Hayashi experimented with the TOSBAC computer. This resulted in a piece entitled TOSBAC Suite, influenced by the Illiac Suite. Later Japanese computer music compositions include a piece by Kenjiro Ezaki presented during Osaka Expo '70 and "Panoramic Sonore" (1974) by music critic Akimichi Takeda. Ezaki also published an article called "Contemporary Music and Computers" in 1970. Since then, Japanese research in computer music has largely been carried out for commercial purposes in popular music, though some of the more serious Japanese musicians used large computer systems such as the Fairlight in the 1970s.[12]

The programming computer for Yamaha's first FM synthesizer GS1. CCRMA, Stanford University

Early computer-music programs typically did not run in real time, although the first experiments on CSIRAC and the Ferranti Mark 1 did operate in real time. From the late 1950s, with increasingly sophisticated programming, programs would run for hours or days, on multimillion-dollar computers, to generate a few minutes of music.[13][14] One way around this was to use a 'hybrid system' of digital control of an analog synthesiser and early examples of this were Max Mathews' GROOVE system (1969) and also MUSYS by Peter Zinovieff (1969). In the late 1970s these systems became commercialised, notably by systems like the Roland MC-8 Microcomposer, where a microprocessor-based system controls an analog synthesizer, released in 1978.[12] John Chowning's work on FM synthesis from the 1960s to the 1970s allowed much more efficient digital synthesis,[15] eventually leading to the development of the affordable FM synthesis-based Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer, released in 1983.[16] In addition to the Yamaha DX7, the advent of inexpensive digital chips and microcomputers opened the door to real-time generation of computer music.[16] In the 1980s, Japanese personal computers such as the NEC PC-88 came installed with FM synthesis sound chips and featured audio programming languages such as Music Macro Language (MML) and MIDI interfaces, which were most often used to produce video game music, or chiptunes.[12] By the early 1990s, the performance of microprocessor-based computers reached the point that real-time generation of computer music using more general programs and algorithms became possible.[17]

Interesting sounds must have a fluidity and changeability that allows them to remain fresh to the ear. In computer music this subtle ingredient is bought at a high computational cost, both in terms of the number of items requiring detail in a score and in the amount of interpretive work the instruments must produce to realize this detail in sound.[18]

Advances in computing power and software for manipulation of digital media have dramatically affected the way computer music is generated and performed. Current-generation micro-computers are powerful enough to perform very sophisticated audio synthesis using a wide variety of algorithms and approaches. Computer music systems and approaches are now ubiquitous, and so firmly embedded in the process of creating music that we hardly give them a second thought: computer-based synthesizers, digital mixers, and effects units have become so commonplace that use of digital rather than analog technology to create and record music is the norm, rather than the exception.[19]

Despite the ubiquity of computer music in contemporary culture, there is considerable activity in the field of computer music, as researchers continue to pursue new and interesting computer-based synthesis, composition, and performance approaches. Throughout the world there are many organizations and institutions dedicated to the area of computer and electronic music study and research, including the ICMA (International Computer Music Association), C4DM (Centre for Digital Music), IRCAM, GRAME, SEAMUS (Society for Electro Acoustic Music in the United States), CEC (Canadian Electroacoustic Community), and a great number of institutions of higher learning around the world.

Computer-aided algorithmic composition

Diagram illustrating the position of CAAC in relation to other Generative music Systems

Computer-aided algorithmic composition (CAAC, pronounced "sea-ack") is the implementation and use of algorithmic composition techniques in software. This label is derived from the combination of two labels, each too vague for continued use. The label computer-aided composition lacks the specificity of using generative algorithms. Music produced with notation or sequencing software could easily be considered computer-aided composition. The label algorithmic composition is likewise too broad, particularly in that it does not specify the use of a computer. The term computer-aided, rather than computer-assisted, is used in the same manner as computer-aided design.[26]

Machine improvisation uses computer algorithms to create improvisation on existing music materials. This is usually done by sophisticated recombination of musical phrases extracted from existing music, either live or pre-recorded. In order to achieve credible improvisation in particular style, machine improvisation uses machine learning and pattern matching algorithms to analyze existing musical examples. The resulting patterns are then used to create new variations "in the style" of the original music, developing a notion of stylistic reinjection. This is different from other improvisation methods with computers that use algorithmic composition to generate new music without performing analysis of existing music examples.[27]

Live coding[41] (sometimes known as 'interactive programming', 'on-the-fly programming',[42] 'just in time programming') is the name given to the process of writing software in realtime as part of a performance. Recently it has been explored as a more rigorous alternative to laptop musicians who, live coders often feel, lack the charisma and pizzazz of musicians performing live.[43]

• Ariza, C. 2005. "Navigating the Landscape of Computer-Aided Algorithmic Composition Systems: A Definition, Seven Descriptors, and a Lexicon of Systems and Research." In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference. San Francisco: International Computer Music Association. 765–772.
• Ariza, C. 2005. An Open Design for Computer-Aided Algorithmic Music Composition: athenaCL. PhD Dissertation, New York University.
• Berg, Paul (1996). "Abstracting the Future: The Search for Musical Constructs". Computer Music Journal. 20 (3): 24–27. doi:10.2307/3680818. JSTOR 3680818.
• Boulanger, Richard, ed. (6 March 2000). The Csound Book: Perspectives in Software Synthesis, Sound Design, Signal Processing, and Programming. The MIT Press. p. 740. ISBN 978-0-262-52261-8. Archived from the original on 2 January 2010. Retrieved 3 October 2009.
• Chadabe, Joel. 1997. Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
• Chowning, John. 1973. "The Synthesis of Complex Audio Spectra by Means of Frequency Modulation". Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 21, no. 7:526–34.
• Collins, Nick (2009). Introduction to Computer Music. Chichester: Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-71455-3.
• Dodge, Charles; Jerse (1997). Computer Music: Synthesis, Composition and Performance. Thomas A. (2nd ed.). New York: Schirmer Books. p. 453. ISBN 978-0-02-864682-4.
• Doornbusch, P. 2015. "A Chronology / History of Electronic and Computer Music and Related Events 1906 - 2015"
• Doornbusch, P. 2017. "MuSA 2017 – Early Computer Music Experiments in Australia, England and the USA"
• Heifetz, Robin (1989). On the Wires of Our Nerves. Lewisburg Pa.: Bucknell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8387-5155-8.
• D. Herremans; C.H. Chuan; E. Chew (2017). "A Functional Taxonomy of Music Generation Systems". ACM Computing Surveys. 50 (5): 69:1–30. arXiv:1812.04832. doi:10.1109/TAFFC.2017.2737984. S2CID 54475410.
• Manning, Peter (2004). Electronic and Computer Music (revised and expanded ed.). Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517085-6.
• Perry, Mark, and Thomas Margoni. 2010. "From Music Tracks to Google Maps: Who Owns Computer-Generated Works?". Computer Law and Security Review 26: 621–29.
• Roads, Curtis (1994). The Computer Music Tutorial. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-68082-0.
• Supper, Martin (2001). "A Few Remarks on Algorithmic Composition". Computer Music Journal. 25: 48–53. doi:10.1162/014892601300126106. S2CID 21260852.
• Xenakis, Iannis (2001). Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition. Harmonologia Series No. 6. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Pr. ISBN 978-1-57647-079-4.