Computer History Museum

<p>Small box with ADB connector at one end, and two MIDI connectors on the other end.</p>

This phonograph record contains recordings of disco songs inspired by arcade games of the early 1980s, including Pac-Man, Frogger, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Defender, Mousetrap, and Berzerk. Song titles listed on the album sleeve are "Pac-Man Fever," "Froggy's Lament," "Ode to a Centipede," "Do the Donkey Kong," Hyperspace," The Defender," "Mousetrap," and "Goin' Berzerk." Sounds employed in the music include keyboards, cowbell, string polyensemble, "Jason's space gun," drums, bass and guitar.

B&W image of a Seiko electronic piano keyboard connected to an Amiga PC with Old MacDonald music on screen. An player is off to the right with only his left hand on the keybaotrd and his right hand on the computer mouse.

<p>MusicMate Keyboard consists of outer cardboard box, keyboard with attached interface cord, one 5 1/4-inch diameter floppy disk, warranty registration card, plastic bag containing disk and card.</p>

In the late 1950s computer music pioneer Dr. Max Mathews created MUSIC, the first widely used music synthesis program while working in the Acoustic Research Group at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Over the next forty years at Bell Labs at then at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University, Mathews advanced and refined digital computer music synthesis. In this video Mathews describes and demonstrates his Radio Baton Controller and Conductor software program and performs brief selections by Bach, Chopin, Beethoven and Appleton. A Radio Baton is an electronic instrument with two baton controllers and a receiving base called the antenna. In the end of each baton is a small radio transmitter. As the batons are moved over the receiving base, four antennas in the base are able to determine the batons’ location in three-dimensional space. The movements of the batons through space are converted into instructions determining how the music is to be synthesized. The Radio Baton Conductor Model uses the model of an orchestra conductor controlling the musical tempo, dynamics and expression of the piece. The Conductor program puts the pitches and the durations of the notes in a score that the computer reads as a sequence of beats in the computer memory. The conductor can move the batons around with his two hands, controlling six variables, and assign these variables to whatever functions in the music are important at any instant of the music. When asked if the radio baton was a successful instrument, Mathews answered, “I suspect actually it was too successful. It may have made music too easy to play. But my vision there, and the vision I think I got from John Chowning was that everyone could have his own orchestra and could interpret music according to his particular feelings about it. And that this might be a much more satisfying way than simply sitting and listening to a recording or simply listening to a concert in a concert hall.” Made at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Stanford University

<p>Measurements are of guitar as pictured.</p>

<p>Album contains recordings of ten pieces composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed on a Moog modular synthesizer. Wendy Carlos utlized an 8-track tape recording system to obtain the multiple takes and tracks required to create the layered sound of the album. Album tracks include Air on a G String; various Bach Inventions; Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring; and the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major. On the back cover of LP sleeve: "Electronic Realizations and Performances by Walter Carlos with the assistance of Benjamin Folkman." From the cover text describing the use of the Moog Synthesizer: "Often two pairs of hands and several feet are needed to take advantage of all that the Moog Synthesizer can do, but the instrument is constantly being improved. This album, then, is a proving ground both for the synthesizer and for our collaborative musicianship. We have tried to make our performances musically expressive, electronically idiomatic, and spiritually and musicologically faithful to Bach - conditions probably not totally reconcilable."</p>

<p>There is a removable 32 megabyte storage card loaded in the object.</p>

From abstract: " Computers have revolutionized music-making. Two of the most important pioneers of computer music, Max Mathews and John Chowning, stand at the epicenter of this musical revolution. Research led by Mathews at Bell Laboratories, beginning in the 1950s, created a series of programming languages that are the direct precursors of today's software synthesizers. His many contributions to interactive music systems, algorithmic composition, and psychoacoustics (with Jean-Claude Risset) are equally seminal. Stanford's legendary Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA, pronounced karma) led by Chowning, has long been a hotbed of innovation. After groundbreaking research in sound spatialization, Chowning's invention of frequency modulation (FM) synthesis led to the most successful synthesizer of all time: the Yamaha DX7. Join Chowning and Mathews in conversation with Curtis Roads, composer and music historian. This will be followed by Chryssie Nanou (pianist) performing, Duet for One Pianist." View online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hloic1oBfug

<p>This reel contains the following compositions made using PDP-10 using SCORE (l. SMith) and spatial routines, FM spectron: Sabelithe II - 1971 Turenas - 1972</p>