The Music Machine, 1971

Short National Research Council (of Canada) about one of the first interactive digital systems for music composition.

(via Jamie McKelvie)

Algorithmic Composition: Computational Thinking in Music in last month’s Communications of the ACM (click through to read the full paper)

[via namebound new-aesthetic]

"

Wired: When you finally got your hands on a computer in the 1950s, what did you do with it?

Brooks: In our first year of graduate school, a friend and I wrote a program to compose tunes. The only large sample of tunes we had access to was hymns, so we started generating common-meter hymns. They were good enough that we could have palmed them off to any choir.

"

Fred Brooks, of The Mythical Man-Month fame, on what must be some of the earliest computer-generated music.

(Source: Wired)

John Cage’s 4’33” on YouTube:

NOTICE: This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG. The audio has been disabled.

I have no idea whether this is a joke or for real, but it’s hilarious in either case.

(via WFMU)