in 1957, I Did Write the First Programs That Could Play Music on a Computer Though Not Live

in 1957, I Did Write the First Programs That Could Play Music on a Computer Though Not Live

Andrew Clark

0621415

Sept. 23, 2008

Max Matthews

Born: Columbus, Nebraska, on November 13, 1926(4)

Education: electrical engineering at California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving a Sc.D. in 1954(4)

Life:

  • As a researcher at Bell Labratories, he created the first of the “Music N” series of programs, which were widely used programs for sound generation on the computer(1)
  • “MUSIC I was the first computer program for generating digital audio waveforms through direct synthesis. It was one of the first programs for making music (in actuality, sound) on a digital computer, and was certainly the first program to gain wide acceptance in the music research community as viable for that task.” (2)
  • “In 1957, I did write the first programs that could play music on a computer” though not live.” (6)
  • “typically, it would take 10 minutes for a computer to calculate one minute of music” (6)
  • he continues as a leader in digital audio research, synthesis, and human-computer interaction to this very day (4)
  • In the words of Max Matthews:
  • “Computer performance of music was born in 1957 when an IBM 704 in NYC played a 17 second composition on the Music I program which I wrote. The timbres and notes were not inspiring, but the technical breakthrough is still reverberating. Music I led me to Music II through V.” (5)
  • Using the technology that Andrew Schloss developed in the Radio Drum, Max Matthews developed the radio baton.
  • "Starting with the Groove program in 1970, my interests have focused on live performance and what a computer can do to aid a performer. I made a controller, the radio-baton, plus a program, the conductor program, to provide new ways for interpreting and performing traditional scores.” (5)
  • “In 1961, Mathews arranged the well-known song Daisy Bell ("Daisy, daisy") for an uncanny performance by computer-synthesized human voice, using technology developed by John Kelly of Bell Laboratories and others.” (4)
  • “One of the more famous moments in Bell Labs' synthetic speech research was the sample created by John L. Kelly in 1962, using an IBM 704 computer. Kelly's vocoder synthesizer recreated the song "Bicycle Built for Two," with musical accompaniment from Max Mathews.” (3)
  • The performance of this song was viewed by Arthur Clark, who later made the suggestion that Hal the computer sing it as he was shut down in the movie “2001 a Space Odyssey”.
  • Directed the Acoustical and Behavioral ResearchCenter at Bell Laboratories from 1962 to 1985 (2)
  • This involved speech communication, visual communication, human memory and learning, programmed instruction, analysis of subjective opinions, physical acoustics, and industrial robotics. (2)
  • “From 1974 to 1980 he was the Scientific Advisor to the Institute de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), Paris, France, and since 1987 has been Professor of Music (Research) at StanfordUniversity.” (4)
  1. Charles Dodge. “Computer Music: Synthesis, Composition, and Performance”. Schirmer Books, New York. 1997.
  1. “ Wikipedia, September 2008
  1. “ Bell Labs Press Release, March 1997.
  1. “ copyright NationMaster.com, 2005.
  1. Article: "Horizons in Computer Music," March 8-9, 1997, IndianaUniversity
  1. MSNBC News Broadcast, around 1998.
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