Think Garageband is New?

Electronic and Computer Music BY NATHAN BREWER, IEEE HISTORY CENTER Computers play an integral part in today’s music industry. From recording and production to composition, many of today’s popular artists use computers in their work. While it may evoke images of high-tech and sophisticated machinery, computer music and electronic music are not recent phenomena; electronic music has been produced for over a century, and music has been made using computers since before the era of rock and roll. While the widespread use of computers in recording and production may have only gained favor within the mainstream industry in the past 30 years, the genre has a very rich and deep history. Electro-acoustic instrumentation dates back to the mid 18th century with the Denis d'or (1753) and the Clavecin électrique (1759). The Denis d’or is known only through written accounts, but diagrams from the Clavecin électrique survive. The Clavecin électrique employs a globe generator which charges a pair of bells hanging from iron bars, and a musician can press a key which will oscillate a clapper between the bells, producing a certain note. These instruments were developed almost a century before the phonautograph (1857), the earliest known device for sound recording. Clavecin électrique Elisha Gray’s acoustic telegraph (1875) is widely considered to be the first synthesizer. Other electronic instruments would soon follow; the Telharmonium, developed byThaddeus Cahill between 1892 and 1914, was one of the first to be used for live performances. The instrument was used for playing live in a music hall and its music would be broadcast over telephone lines. However, its enormous size (over 200 tons and 60 feet in length) and tendency to cause crosstalk on its telephone broadcasts ultimately caused the instrument to fall out of favor. Other early electronic instruments such as theAudion Piano (1915), the Theremin (1920), the Croix Sonore (1926), and the Hammond Organ (1934) proved to be more successful. These instruments led to new approaches to sound and music composition that was previously not possible with traditional instruments. "Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music," published in 1907 by Ferruccio Busoni, was one of the most influential papers in the development of electronic music. It discussed several approaches to music now made possible, including microtuning, which is the use of scales based on increments smaller than semitones. Futurist Luigi Russolo’s "The Art of Noises" also took an avant-garde approach, valuing noises such as roars, whistling and buzzing. In 1914, the first concert to perform Russolo’s manifesto featuring his Intonarumori, acoustical noise instruments, was so ill received that it caused a riot. These ideas and approaches to music later influenced electronic avant-garde composers such as Pierre Schaeffer, Edgard Varèse, John Cage, Pierre Henry, George Antheil and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Luigi Russolo’s Intonarumori The advent of the computer furthered the possibilities of electronic music composition. The first computer used for playing music was the CSIR Mk1, developed in Sydney in the late 1940s by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Built and designed by Trevor Pearcy and Maston Beard and programmed by Geoffrey Hill, the CSIR Mk1 publicly played "Colonel Bogey" in 1951. Later renamed the CSIRAC in 1955, the machine was programmed to accept a punched paper data tape in standard music notation. No recordings of the CSIRAC exist, and the first known recorded computer generated music was a medley of "God Save the King," "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "In the Mood" played by the Ferranti Mark 1 at the end of 1951. Hired by Bell Labs in 1954, Max Mathews is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of computer music. Mathews wrote MUSIC-I, which was the first program to produce digital audio through use of an IBM 704 computer; the CSIRAC and Ferranti only produced analog audio. With John Chowning, Mathews helped set up a computer music program using the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory’s computer system in 1964. Chowning would later develop the FM synthesis algorithm in 1967, and founded the Center for Computer Research and Musical Acoustics in 1975. The Center for Computer Research and Musical Acoustics would later employ John Pierce, a long time employee of Bell Labs, who contributed pioneering work to digital speech synthesis. CSIRAC, Photo Courtesy John O’Neill Early computers used for music could not process data fast enough to play in real time, but could be used to generate scores. One of the first composers to utilize computers was Iannis Xenakis.  Nathan Brewer is Global History Network Administrator and Librarian at the IEEE History Center at the IEEE History Center at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. Visit the IEEE History Center's Web page at:www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center. Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org. Copyright © 2011 IEEE