Roman Kogan
romwell@gmail.com SUNY Stony Brook
CSE 301 - History of Computing
Spring 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
The history and development of Computer Music
The history of computer music starts with the invention of
the computer. However, the real musicians couldn't really
use the technology until it became affordable enough and until
the systems designed specifically for music appeared on the market,
which happened in the late 70's. This page describes the emergence
and development of the new technologies into the 21'st century. Instead
of giving a lot of general information about the tehcnologies and timelines,
we shall instead pay more attention to the landmark devices that revolutionized
the stage at their time of appearance. More attention is paid not to the
curious 'first' inventions, but to the ones that actually made impact
and influenced the musicians and the industry.
First, we discuss the important inventions of the analogue electronic
music era. These are important because the digital and computer instruments
stem directly from the analogue ones, and the sound is often produced
by using the same mathematical principles. A lot of computer-based software
of today reflects the analog hardware of the 70's in one way or another.
Theremin: the birth of electronic music
It's impossible to speak of electronic music and not speak of Theremin (remember that
high-pitch melody sound sound in Good Vibrations ?)
Theremin was the instrument that started it all. Invented remarkably early -
around 1917 - in Russia by Leon Termen (or Theremin, spelling varies) it
was the first practical (and portable) electronic music instrument, and
also the one that brought the electronic sound to the masses. It was preceded
by Thelarmonium, a multi-ton monstrocity that never really get a lot of
attention, and some other instruments that fell into obscurity as well.
On the other hand, Theremin got popular well beyond the Soviet Union (where
even Lenin got to play it once!), being a star in the US and teaching
a generation of Theremin players (Clara Rockmore being the most famous). In fact, RCA even
manufactured Theremins in 1929, in spite of the stock market crash !
Figure 1: Leon Theremin and his Instrument
So what was this instrument ? It was a box with two antennas that produced continous,
high-pitch eerie sounds. The performer would approach the instrument and wave
hands around the antennas to produce sounds. The distance to the right (vertical) antenna would
change the pitch, while the distance to the left (horizontal) antenna would change the volume
of the sound (See more on technical details at [3]). The Theremin is difficult to play, since, like on violin, the notes and the volume
are not quantized; moreover, there are no strings, no frets, no keys, and
even something done more easily on "traditional" instruments - playing a scale - is quite hard.
Figure 2: Leon Theremin and his Instrument, in the US
It is hard to overstimate the importance of Theremin. First of all, it was one of the first instruments
that produced sounds entirely electronically. Secondly, playing the instrument is not like anything
else; human body acts as a capacitor, and no physical contact is required. The process of playing
theremin is akin to producing the sound from 'nowhere' by waving one's hands !(hence another original
name for the instrument, 'Aethervox', the voice from ether). Now Theremin-like optical controls
are common on synthesizers. Also, the inventor of the first widely used commercial synthesizer,
Robert Moog, started his career in electronic music by making Theremins, which have fascinated
him all his life. In fact, in his late years he turned back to making high-class theremins, until death in 2005
(take a look at the device at [4])
Yet another way in which Theremin advanced the music scene is that some serious classical composers
(like Shostakovich !)composed for the Theremin. An instrument is worth nothing if there is no music for it,
and there was a supply of both composers and performers for Theremin, thus creating a big interest in
novel music technologies at the time. Unfortunately, Theremin was to be nearly forgotten; the main reason for that
being the mysterious disappearance of Leon Theremin, the inventor and the main Theremin showman.
See [1] and the excellent movie [2] for more information about the mysterious
life of the inventor and his invention (Leon Theremin would be kidnapped by KGB (or deported by CIA) to serve for the USSR
intelligence; he was thrown into jail, but was later freed and lived a long life, while the West thought he was dead. Finally 'discovered' around the
Perestroika period, he told the details of his life story).
Media 1: Clara Rockmore plays Theremin
The magnetophone
The further development of music as we know it would be impossible if Nazi engineers did not develop a reliable,
hi-fidelity tape recording technique, which resulted in what is know as the Magnetophone
(See more at [5] for the history of magnetic recording). After the war, this technique became
available worldwide, allowing the artists much more freedom of musical expression in their studio recordings.
The main difference is that the tape, unlike the phonograph cylinder or the vinyl disc, can be mixed nearly losslessly,
so the different parts of a song can be recorded separately.
The music scene of the 1950's
At this time, a lot of avant-garde composers start experimenting with the new medium. Even before war, composers tried
to break out of the classical paradigm by using sounds that do not come from traditional instruments. Now, they record
the sounds of nature or mundane objects (toys, trains, etc.) on a tape, and use all these non-musical sounds to create
music - which is now called Music Concrete, inveneted by Pierre Schaeffer.
John Cage explores noise and silience.
Karlheinz Stockhausen plays
with noise, modulators, osciallators and other electronic components, as well as real-world sound to create his revolutionary works.
The musicians are ready for the synthesizer.
The synthesizer
Although scientists experimented with electrical components that made sounds for quite some time now, and there was
work done with filters, etc., all those technological marvels were out of reach of most musicians. All this changed
in the late sixties / early seventies when, at around the same time, Don Buchla
and Robert Moog delivered their synthesizers
on the market.
Figure 4: Buchla 200. We have it at Stony Brook!
These were huge modular systems which one would use to produce sound by connecting various components with patch
cords, in the style of the early telephone stations. The main components are:
Oscillators. These generate a waveform. A simple oscillator would generate a sine wave with a set frequency.
More advanced oscillators would generate triangle waves, rich square waves, or morph continuously from sine to square.
You should think of a square wave as a superposition of infinitely many sine waves.
Filters. These filter out high or low frequencies.
ADSR (also known as Envelope Generators; read: Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release) would generate curves of volatage
to modulate pitch or amplitude
LFO (Low Frequence Oscillator) would be used to modulate filter or amplitude, but, as all other components, can be
linked to antything
Control pad or keyboard
Sequencer to store set of pitches/volumes/lengths to be played back
It is really hard to describe the variety of sounds that can be produced with a modular system. I can only
recommend going to the electronic studio lab and playing with one, or downloading software modular system
(take a look at Moog Modular V, the software
emulation of the Moog Modular endorsed by Moog himself ! Or try the freeware Minimogue VA
to get some notion of what an analog synth might llok like)
Unlike the sounds produced by Theremin (eerie!) or the sounds of Music Concrete, the sounds of the synthesizers were more
pleasing (or could be more pleasing, if the user so desired), and at the same time, they were novel, unusual and fun.
Wendy Carlos re-recorded Bach's music on Moog's synthesizer, to be released under the title
Switched-On Bach (a.k.a S-OB),
- and this album went platinum (the first ever classical platinum ever to go platinum!)
Now the electrnoic music really reached the ears of the majority of the population. Every musician wanted to get his or her
hands on a synthesizer (or should have wanted!), and the music industry immediately gained new players, such as
ARP, Sequential Circuits, etc.
However, the age of analogue equipment is very soon over, as it is being replaced by digital machines and computers.
Media 2: Sequencing Moog Modular
Fairlight CMI
Fairlifgt CMI (by Fairlight) was an ambitious (and successful!) project that started the era of computer music and heavily influenced the hardware scene.
CMI in it stands for Computer Music Instrument, and a computer it is !
Figure 6: The influential Fairlight CMI
Coming from the land of Australia (1980-1982), the synthesizer/computer system featured enough innovations
to write a small book about. It was a basically a computer with a keyboard connected to it, featuring a screen (with a lightpen!)
and GUI for sound editing and sequencing. Pattern-based digital sequencing was one of the big innovations
of Fairlight.
Sequencing means being able to record and manipulate patterns, and then play them back in certain order, overlaying and mixing them.
By recording I mean storing the electrical signal or data that used to produce the sound, not the sound itself.
This was one tehcnology that was availavble only on a very crude level with analog machines. Each note corresponded to a small
box with several knobs to adjust the sound, and recording length was limited by the number of boxes. On the other hand,
digital sequencing is only limited by the amount of main memory (and even then, parts can be backed up). Only one single
digital interface is needed to edit the sequences once they are recorded.
The GUI of Fairlight was a significant innovation by itself, and introduced the concept of a digital workstation, where
a keyboard is connected to a computer for playing and recording for complete production cycle.
However, the main novelty of Fairlight was the introduction of (digital) Sampling. The Fairlight could record any
real-world sound into its sound card memory, and use that as the basic waveform for sound creation (instead of sines
and square waves on the classic analog synths). One could record the sound of trumpet, and play trumpet on Fairlight;
or one could use human voice, nature noises, any instrument, or anything that makes sound in musical compositions
instatly ! Fairlight could sound like anything; complete score for a movie could be made on Fairlight CMI, as, in fact, was done
by Keith Emerson, one of the most prominent keyboardists and and an electronic music pioneer.
Media 3: Keith Emerson demos Fairlight CMI
It is important to understand how the synthesizers have changed when going from analog (like Moog) to digital (Fairlight CMI).
New possibilities were opened (Sampling, Sequencing and Digital Synthesis) that were not even possible with analog machinery. On the professional
level, these two techniques form the basis of how the majority of music is done today. The sequencers have become easier to
use, and the samplers can be larger; modern computers can run more complicated algorithms to generate sound - but the basic principles
and the workflow has not changed critically. Invention of a digital workstation allows one composer to create complete orchestral
works, without the need to hire an actual orchestra ! The digital techniques have effectively replaced the analog machinery: after all,
the analog synthesis can be performed digitally, or the sound of the synth can be sampled; thus one does not need a room full of synthesizers,
but a box of samples. (Although real analog sound is much nicer and live than the sampled one, the analog machines are quite expensive,
much more than their samples or emulators in software)
MIDI
Probably the most important music technology that has influenced all music equipment and has been left unchanged since the 1980's is
MIDI, introduced in 1983, which stands for Musical Instruments Digital Interface. MIDI for
electronic music is what TCP/IP is for the Internet; both of these technoligies came from the same year and both have changed the world.
Basically, MIDI porotocol allows the musical instruments to talk to each other (more on that later) and record music data in a standard way.
Before MIDI was introduced, each synthesizer or system used it own way to record or transmit music data. For instance, Fairlight CMI keyboard
could only be connected to the Fairlight CMI computer, for there were no standard about what signal should be sent. Furthermore, Fairlight
sequencer could only control Fairlight synthesizer, and other sequencer stations had to be used only with the equipment from the corresponding
manufacturer. As a consequence, nearly all synthesizers came with built-in keyboards (or, as the size of the electronics shrinked,
the synthesizers were built into keyboards). Keyboardists in rock and pop bands would often be hidden behind the "wall" of synthesizers,
if they wanted to use more than one sound or layer together the sounds from several synthesiezers.
All this changed when MIDI was introduced. On a basic level, MIDI can be thought of as sheet music for synthsizers or computers, with specifications
on how to transfer it. Another way is to view it as a command language: when the performer presses keys or twists knobs on a keyboard,
a series of commands are sent to the sound modules that generate sounds according to the commands (we shall further call them MIDI messages).
Each message also bears a timecode, so the messages can be recorded, processed, and then sent back to the sound module.
There are two most common MIDI messages: Note On and Note Off. When a performer presses a key on a keyboard, a Note On message
is sent with the data about which key has been pressed and with what velocity. Typical sound module would recieve this message
and start playing that note, until it receives a Note Off message, which is sent when the performer releases that key.
Figure 7: A typical stream of MIDI messages
Now the creators of MIDI specifaction (mainly, Dave Smith, who was the driving force and the original
proposer of MIDI) have incorporated the ability to control several instruments from a single keyboard or sequencer. Each message
carries a channel number, from 0 to 15, and each instrument can be set to listen to the messages on only one or all channels.
See midi.org for detailed specifications on other kinds of MIDI messages, their structure, etc.
Figure 8: MIDI Cable
To link the keyboard (MIDI Controller) to the sound modules (samples, synthesizers, etc.) or sequencers, the standard MIDI cable
was introduced. Each MIDI controller would have an OUT port, and sound modules would typically have IN, OUT and THRU ports,
allowing MIDI devices to be linked in a "daisy chain" style. Now the rock keybordists could go on a scene with a single keyboard,
controlling a synthesizer rack in the back!
Figure 9: MIDI Daisy Chain
More importantly, MIDI created a universal way to interconnect musical instruments: sound modules, controllers and sequencers. Even older
models could be retrofitted with a MIDI I/O module. Specifically, MIDI interfaces for the popular computer systems
(Apple Macintosh, Commodore, etc.)
were intoduced immediately, allowing the general purpose computer to become the ultimate MIDI device. Now, with appropriate software,
everyone could have a Fairlight ! Although computers were not powerful enough to completely replace hardware synthesizers, all the sequencing
since MIDI is done on regular computers, using software. As computers grew more powerful, the synthesizers are more and more often
implemented purely in software, even allowing high quality emulation of anolg synthesizers. The hardware synthesizers are much less
widespread now, but MIDI is everywhere, and most often it is used in its original form - 1.0 specification.
General MIDI, XG, KAR and other MIDI extensions
GM, or General MIDI was an extension of MIDI which specified what instrument numbers should correspond to (i.e. 1=Piano, 17=organ, etc.) This
was done with the intention to allow musicians to interchange music in MIDI format, instead of sending/storing large waveform files.
Consequently, most of the home computers and keyboards were released in adherence to the GM specification, and MIDI files started to
be used in games, and later - web pages. Since the early soundcards did not come with a high-quality synthsizer or sampler built-in
(all they were FM-based and low-quality, which is bad for imitating natural instruments), the general population got acquainted with
MIDI through bad sound. A lot of people still think that MIDI "sound" is something bad, coming from an old computer or a cellphone
(since cellphone ringtones are naturally stored as MIDI data). The truth is, obviously, that there is no such thing as "MIDI sound".
One can't tell how good or bad the instrument sounds by looking at sheet music. Nowadays, General MIDI is all but abandoned, since the
professional musicians were not really using it(every musician has his own unique set of gear, so MIDI data won't sound the same
on other musicians' setups anyway). Yamaha came with its own standard, XG, which is similar to GM, but with more instruments.
Karaoke machines "feed" on .kar files, which are MIDI files augmented with timed lyrics. All these extension had nearly no influence
on computer music, except that they were not primarily used.
Digital Synthesizers and Yamaha DX-7
In 1983, one of the most famous digital synthesizers was released:
YamahaDX-7. The synthesizer
featured a new, revolutionary digital synthesis method, called FM synthesis (Frequency Modulation) .
This method involved one oscillator modulating the frequency of another to produce a wide range of sounds that can be morphed easily with controls,
have great dynamics and change with time. Most of the sounds from the 80's were made on FM synthesizers (Casio followed
Yamaha with release of their similar Phase Distortion synthesizers, Roland released).
Figure 10: Yamaha DX-7, the best-selling synth in the world
The princniples of FM synthesizers are quite complicated, and you can read more about them at [16]. One particular
property with regards to implementing FM in hardware is that it would be extremely difficult to implement it
using analog components, but is easy implementable using digital techniques. In fact, while the on-board memory was expensive and scarce,
FM synthesizers were cheaper to manufacture than sound modules based on sampling (or pre-recorded samples stored in ROM; these
are calld romplers). This was the primary reason why a small FM synthesizer was the music-making component of early sound cards, even
for sounds that were supposed to represent real instruments.
Media 4: The typical Yamaha sound
The influence of the DX-7 and FM synthesiz on the music scene of the 80's was huge. The machine was reasonably priced, it sounded fresh
at that time, and everybody wanted to get it. However, it was very difficult to program, and a lot of of people ended up using factory
preset sounds, or getting sounds that were similar; this is why a lot of music from the 80's has the same 'feel' to it. This contributed
to the demise of the FM synthesizers in the 1990's. As ROM memory became cheaper and larger, wavetable synthesis based on samples from
real instruments became the standard in all areas: on professional keyboards, home keyboards and computer sound boards. However, such
method of synthesis does not allow as much of realtime sound manipulation and control; besides, it's more about modifying recorded
sound that creating some completely new sound from scratch. As a result, we see a resurgence of software-based FM synthesizers, such
as Sytrus<
