| computer music
music utilizing digital computers and other
electronic data-processing machinery developed about
1948 in application to musical composition and for
musical research. The techniques of computer
technology permit the indexing of specific genres, or
types, of music (such as 16th-century Italian music or
the works of a given composer) and have proved useful in
the analysis of style, tonal and harmonic structure, and
the process of composition.
In using a computer as a tool in composition,
the composer programs the computer to produce
pitches, rhythms, tone colours, and other musical
elements and to screen these elements through criteria
also chosen by the composer. The output may be
transcribed for performance by conventional instruments
or fed into another device for conversion into sound. In
1963, at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Max Vernon
Mathews and his coworkers devised a computer
capable of synthesizing sound directly. The composer's
input, in the form of mathematical functions, is
translated by the computer into synthesized
musical sounds that are stored in digital form and can
be played back at will. Because the machinery is
flexible and precise, it can yield a wide variety of
musical applications. Although a computer can be
programmed to produce music in traditional styles and
instrumental colours, its principal attraction to
composers has been its ability to expand the previously
available range of musical elements, such as tone
colours and pitches, and the new approaches to musical
form it makes possible.
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