Music Meets The Computer

I have been waiting for the right moment to publish something about the activities of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA and it has come now. I choose to pass on a recent talk given by Microsoft founder Bill Gates there. They actually promoted this event with a picture of Bill standing in front of the new digs of the museum. It just so happens that this pretty nice and modern building was formerly one of the flagship sites of sgi (AKA Silicon Graphics Inc.) This building was sold off as part of the retrenchment of the company. Having spent more than ten (exciting) years with sgi fighting the Microsoft monopoly (and loosing that fight) I rather stayed away. It's somewhat ironic, that after being the home of a company priding itself to represent the future of computing the building now houses a Computer History Museum. For the museum this is a great turn of events after having spent a few years in old and difficult to access barracks on the NASA Ames campus.

Now that superb facilities have been secured the Museum has started to step up its activities and presents a multitude of interesting events. The one coming up is one of the few dedicated to artistic use, namely the making of music with computers. I have always been fascinated by this very special application and I am happy to extend the invitation to you to attend a conversation with John Chowning and Max Mathews, moderated by Curtis Roads. It will be followed by a performance by Chryssie Nanou.



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 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.

TUESDAY, December 14, 2004
6:00 PM Member Reception
7:00 PM Presentation and Performance

Computer History Museum
Hahn Auditorium
1401 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View, CA 94043