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Computer Music

Goal of this page Provide a little information and some links on a few of the several fields of Computer Music

Computer Music can mean a number of things, including:

- aid in developing musical scores
- MIDI programs
- using a computer to emulate the sounds of say a piano or organ.
- the keyboards you can buy instead of a "real" instrument
- ...

However, the goal of this page is to present a limited history and techniques of making tones and single tone (non-chord) sequences to resemble known tunes and songs.

Early (1950s and 1960s) customer engineers and other tinkerers often played at reproducing melodies using the very expensive computers available to them.

The two main physical techniques were to:

- toggle some computer bit which was connected to some amplifier and speaker
- place an AM radio at some computer electrically noisy place (maybe the core stack)
and make code sequences to make suitable audio frequency pulses or RF noise.

Usually folks wonder "who did 'it' first" - ala the Guiness Book of Records.

I have not heard of early pioneers (struggling to get a machine to function at all,

and after that major effort, to make the machine reliable, then make a few
and try to stay in business (or get that PhD or ... something serious.)
I have not heard of Atanosf nor Zuse nor Eckert nor Machley nor Von Neoman playing these frivolous games.

And of course, the early machines were very expensive, and often tightly scheduled.

A good candidate for "1st" is the Univac 1103, as follows:

from Len Shustek 

In case you haven't seen it, here is more evidence for awarding the 
"first computer music" medal to Univac from David Grier's column in 
last December's [2006] Computer magazine.  I'm quite confused about models 
and dates, though, because he talks about "December 1958" and the 
staff in Univac's North Dallas office using a Univac 1103.  But the 
Univac I was delivered in 1951, and the 1103 in 1953.  I don't think 
Univac existed as a company until 1950. I've copied David in case he 
wants to comment.
-- Len


At 08:47 PM 1/25/2007, Grant Saviers wrote:
>I suspect the UNIVAC I wins the "first" medal for playing music 
>generated from a computer bus. I haven't heard others tell this 
>story, so I thought I would add it to the folklore.
>
>The UNIVAC I at Case played music.  The system as designed I believe 
>had a speaker on one of the serial memory busses.  This was 
>convenient for operators to hear a stop, stall or hang.  I believe 
>the music program wasn't written at Case.  Digibarn's site claims 
>that UNIVAC freely distributed a music playing program and they have 
>the program on their want list.
>One of the songs was "Bicycle Built for Two" and was usually the 
>most popular for demos.  Now leap forward to Kubrick's 2001 
>film.  As HAL was being decommissioned by unplugging its memories, 
>you might remember that one of the last things it did was play the 
>refrain from Daisy Bell ("Bicycle Built for Two").  Maybe this is a 
>coincidence, but I always liked to believe it was a reference to the 
>earliest computer playback of music.  Wikipedia credits a visit by 
>Kubrick to Bell Labs and an IBM 704 speech demonstration of Daisy 
>Bell as the HAL going to sleep inspiration, 
>see  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bell. Apparently this was 
>circa 1962 and long after the UNIVAC I was playing music.
>Since the U-I has good claim on "first commercial computer" the 
>first is likely "playback of music on a commercial computer", since 
>all "firsts" need many qualifiers.  The CBI transcript of the 
>Unisys-CBI-Smithsonian 1990 UNIVAC conference has a claim by Francis 
>Holberton that he, not Mauchly wrote a music program for the 
>dedication party (likely early 1951) of the first working UNIVAC I  (see
>www.cbi.umn.edu/oh/pdf.phtml?id=49 pages 72/73).   Also, it is 
>claimed that a tape of the program was given to CBI.
>
>I suspect that Al's "universal" 1/2" magnetic tape reader could be 
>set up to read UNIVAC I tapes as they were readable on later 
>generations of UNISERVOS  (the Case 1107 UNISERVO IIA's could read 
>them).  This would be a very interesting software recovery project!
>
>Grant

Other early computers playing preprogrammed tunes are:

- Iowa State University's CYCLONE 1961
- IBM 1401 - in Iceland - 1961 (link being worked on)

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