Computer music

Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and application of new and existing computer software technologies and basic aspects of music, such as sound synthesis, digital signal processing, sound design, sonic diffusion, acoustics, and psychoacoustics. The field of computer music can trace its roots back to the origins of electronic music, and the very first experiments and innovations with electronic instruments at the turn of the 20th century. In the 2000s, with the widespread availability of relatively affordable home computers that have a fast processing speed, and the growth of home recording using digital audio recording systems ranging from GarageBand to Pro Tools, the term is sometimes used to describe music that has been created using digital technology. 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, but there is no evidence that they actually did it. 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. In 1951 it publicly played the 'Colonel Bogey March' 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. 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 descendents, further popularising computer music through a 1963 article in Science. 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. 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.