Computers And Music Essay Research Paper Computers

Computers And Music Essay, Research Paper

Computers and Music

Over centuries past, music has seen leaps and bounds in the enhancement of theory, instruments, and recording arts. The first major leap was the invention of the piano in 1709 by Bartolomeo Cristofori. From that first major step came the introduction of electronic instruments short after the harnessing of electricity which came in the early 19th century. Soon after that came recording and then on to synthesizers and eventually digital recording. As computers were introduced to society, computer music was also brought into our vision. What we are seeing today in the music industry is the use of computers and the Internet to distribute music, whereas in the past, distribution was only available via record, eight track, tape and compact disc. There are a few problems that come with the distribution of music via the Internet, mostly legal, having to do with record companies. With computers becoming a bigger and more important part of our society everyday, it is inevitable that they will affect our music more than what they have already. Computers will become even more depended upon for producing and distributing music in the future.

Thaddeus Cahill took the first step in computer music in 1897 with his Dynamophone. The first fully developed model was presented to the public in 1906. Weighing in at 200 tons and measuring 60 feet in length, it is easy to see how this invention passed into obscurity fairly quickly. Not only was it very large, but it was only capable of performing a “a continuous range of pitches by alternating the frequency of an electronic alternator.” It wasn’t much, but it did provide a stepping stone for scientists and music enthusiasts alike. In the following twenty years, the Dynamophone developed into much smaller, yet still primitive instruments that did basically the same thing.

It wasn’t until around 1945 that computer music finally began to take shape. This marked the beginning of “The Electronic Era”, as called by many people around the world. In 1948, a man named Peter Schaeffer began recording natural sounds such as wind and thunder. He was the first to transform prerecorded sounds editing out portions of them, varying the playback speed, playing the sounds backwards and combining them with other sounds. In October 1948 Peter performed his music in Paris. This was the first public performance of music not played by humans.

After Peter Schaeffer’s work, composers became more interested in creating sounds instead of simply recording and manipulating them. This lead to the first recorded simple sine tone free of overtones. With this simple tone, methods were developed to filter, modulate and reverberate it into other sounds that mimicked instruments. This was the true beginning of computer music. Soon after this innovation came the worlds first synthesizer in 1959.

During the 1960’s there was a lot of experimentation with synthesizers. With the development of the digital system in the computer science flied, synthesizers went from only being able to play single melodies at a time (which had to be recorded and played with another melody to create music) to being able to play more than one by 1970. At this point in time, many pop music stars incorporated synthesizers into their songs.

In the 1970’s computer programs were finally being made that were capable of sonic manipulation. Computers were becoming smaller, faster and affordable. Computer music was finally making its way into the private household. As the 1970’s came to a close, more emphasis was directed “toward the development of instruments that utilized this improved technology.” In 1983, Yamaha introduced the first stand alone digital synthesizer. It was called the DX-7 and was priced at just under $2000 American. It sold over 200 000 units and remains the highest selling synthesizer ever made.

Just prior to the release of the DX-7, a group of musicians and music merchants met to standardize an interface by which all of these new electronic instruments could relate. Thus the musical instrumental digital interface was born, more commonly known as MIDI. Since then, computers have come far in means of speed, size and cost. Almost every home has a computer of sorts in it and almost every one of them is able to play music using MIDI components. With the recent computer craze and availability of the Internet many new music formats have been made available. Tracking programs, wav files, mp3’s and real audio are a few of these.

As mentioned previously, MIDI stands for musical instrumental digital interface and is the common language of computer music. Over the years, MIDI has been developed to the point of sounding almost exactly like the instruments it is attempting to imitate. The actual sound of MIDI is easy to recognize in the Yamaha keyboards that are found in many homes around the world. Although there are now much better ways to get certain sounds out of your computer, (like using digitally recorded samples) there are many computer music composers who continue to live and work in the world of MIDI.

One of the formats of computer music that has taken the place of MIDI in the minds of many computer music composers is the MOD. A MOD is a file format that is made in much the same way that a multi-track recording is. The programs that MOD’s are made in are called