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Hubert Howe Aaron Copland School of Music My Experiences with Queens College Flushing, New York 11367 USA Mathews in the Early Days [email protected] of

I first met Max Mathews in about 1964, when I brief contacts, I gradually came to understand what was still an undergraduate student at Princeton Max had been up to during these early years. University. I had been working for Jim Randall, who In my opinion, computer music would not was composing his piece Mudgett: Monologues of exist if Max Mathews had not been running the a Mass Murderer during the spring for a in Behavioral and Acoustical Research departments at the summer. Computer music as we now know it Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New existed then only at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Jersey. had always been the institution and Jim’s way of working on this piece was to that did cutting-edge research on sound, because it compute a section of it at Princeton and drive a was applicable to their main product, the telephone. computer tape up to Bell Labs at Murray Hill, New Much of their research was devoted to such subjects Jersey, where he would convert it to sound, record it as figuring out how poor a transmitted signal could on a reel-to-reel tape, and take it back to Princeton, be while still being intelligible at the other end of where he could listen to it carefully and splice it into the phone line, so that they could save two cents the larger composition, or throw it out and redo that on every phone. (In those days, only rotary landline portion. The limitations of the data-storage system instruments existed.) Bell Labs had long done basic at that time were such that he had a maximum of work on acoustics, extending all the way back to the about two minutes of music that could be converted 1920s. on a single reel. The building always had very tight security In the fall of that year, I became a graduate (making it difficult for Godfrey Winham, who was student, and in collaboration with Godfrey Winham, a British citizen). When you walked from the front we undertook the task of exporting the music of the building to Max Mathews’s office, you went programming language that Max Mathews had through a gallery of their new products, which developed—Music IV—to Princeton. It was at that is where I first saw a videophone. (It required time that I began to realize the comprehensive six telephone lines to transmit the image.) The nature of the vision he had developed for computer Labs always had first-rate equipment and facilities, music, one that has undergirded much of the work including a large anechoic chamber; I once had the that has been going ever since. Godfrey, Jim, and strange experience of being inside it. When Max I still would visit Bell Labs to convert our files came along, he had his staff also working on music. to sound, but it was not too long after that Bell Partly, this was because he was a violinist, and he Labs donated the system they had been using to was interested in the acoustics of the instrument. Princeton, while they implemented a better system. For many years, he admired the work of Carleen That meant that we could do most of our work Hutchins, who made violins and other stringed at Princeton, only going to Bell Labs for our final instruments in the proportions of the violin, but copies. (The converter at Princeton was limited to this was really 17th-century research. a 10-kHz sampling rate, monaural, whereas at Bell The modern computer as we know it was invented Labs they then had 20 kHz, stereo.) We continued to in the 1950s, and by the late years of that decade, it meet Max, although much of our immediate contact was the IBM corporation that controlled almost the was with other people. In later years, I met and got entire market. The only computers that existed were to know Jean-Claude Risset, and I also saw the early mainframe machines, which were huge and required GROOVE system developed by Dick Moore but special climate-controlled rooms and round-the- used mostly by Emmanuel Ghent. Through these clock technicians to keep them going. Only large corporations and universities could afford to buy Computer Music Journal, 33:3, pp. 41–44, Fall 2009 such machines, and they were also very expensive to c 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. run. Fortunately, Princeton University was able to

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/comj.2009.33.3.41 by guest on 30 September 2021 support our research, which they did by granting us ultimately went through version 5. The problems what we called “funny money,” which represented with the process at that time were that the data the computer time we used. Totals adding up to capacity and speed of computer tape—the only large hundreds and thousands of dollars were printed on storage medium—were not sufficient to produce the last page of all our jobs. good-quality sound, but that would change later My first machine was the IBM 7090, which took with the advancing technology. I think he probably up an entire large room, probably 700 to 1,000 square envisioned many of the products that later came feet in size. One of the impressive things was the about, such as and effects devices. console, which was full of blinking lights. Every Max Mathews hired a number of top-notch people time a number was loaded into the accumulator, to work on his music projects. The first composer which was the main register that the machine used, was , who wrote an article in the a light corresponding to each bit was lit. Users were Journal of Music Theory in the early 1960s. He not allowed into the computer room, but it had later left computer music but wrote an interesting a large window into which we could look to see book, Meta+Hodos (1964), an application of gestalt whether and when our jobs would be run. The main theory and cognitive science to music. When I first console only took up about as much room as a large went there, a programmer named Joan Miller was desk. Using switches on the console, an operator working on Music IV. She was outstanding, probably could enter machine instructions directly into the only exceeded by , who is perhaps best registers, which was necessary sometimes during known for developing . Through her work maintenance operations. What occupied most of I began to realize the power and sophistication of the floor space were 10–15 drives, the programming that went into Music IV. The which were the main storage media. Every time power lay, first of all, in the ability to construct the data was written and had to be re-read, the tape had sound wave. Because all sounds are waves, if you to be rewound. The machine was based on a 6-bit can generate any wave, you can generate any sound. character (which was why it printed only capital The other important point was that, by representing letters), programmed in an octal number system, all of the devices used in constructing the sound and had a 36-bit word, making it slightly more in little computer modules called unit generators accurate that the later 32-bit machines. (Bytes and (an invention by Max Mathews), you could have hexadecimal numbers came later with the System virtually an unlimited amount of equipment; the 360.) Also impressive in size was the printer, which only limitation was in the length of time it took was also about the size of a large desk. The printer to produce the sound, which was often quite long. was the main way users received output, which Learning to describe sounds was not easy, and it consisted of fan-folded sheets of 11 × 17-in. paper. took me years to work it out. Some users impressed others with the large amounts The data speeds and amounts were a serious of print-out they could produce on a given occasion, limitation of early computer music. Our first work most of which was thrown out. could only be realized at 10-kHz mono, which How anyone could have envisioned the potential allowed frequencies only up to 5 kHz. I thought of computers from this manner of interaction still it was heaven when we went to 20-kHz mono or seems mysterious to me, but Max Mathews was a 10-kHz stereo. The only way to record sound was great visionary. He realized the possibilities of the on quarter-inch analog magnetic tape (this was even digital representation of music, and he started using before the cassette!), and the only way to assemble analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters tapes into compositions was by splicing. to allow computers to process sounds. Once he Apart from James Tenney, the musical results of had done that, he realized the potential for music most of the people working at Bell Labs, including synthesis in the concept of generating and processing Max Mathews, were primitive. The work was the waveform digitally from scratch, and he started imaginative and sophisticated in terms of the sound work in the 1950s on a series of music programs that quality, but it was not cutting-edge in a musical

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/comj.2009.33.3.41 by guest on 30 September 2021 sense. Some of the writings of people like John as some very interesting abstract sounds. This piece Pierce (Max’s boss) suggested to me that they included the first compositional use of the “endless did not regard music as a serious field of study. glissando,” as well as other things he conceived. His Science was serious; music was discussed in the second piece was Mutations, whichusedsomeof language of the emotions. Of course, this attitude these sounds but is also full of other musical ideas, was prevalent among scientists at that time, and such as the opening, where a series of arpeggiated the people at Bell Labs were way ahead of their tones is re-attacked in a bell-like fashion. This work counterparts elsewhere. I remember a meeting of also was the first to use waveshaping. [Editor’s note: the Audio Engineering Society in New York where It was also the first to use FM synthesis.] I always felt Walter (later Wendy) Carlos gave a presentation that his most interesting sounds were the original about his work, which included playing a portion “electronic” materials rather than the imitations of of his forthcoming album Switched-On Bach. This musical instruments. was greeted with the remark that finally electronic Jean-Claude Risset later worked on Music V for music had produced something tasteful. Jim Randall Max Mathews, and then he returned to France, attempted to address this problem with three articles where he had a brief stint at IRCAM, but lived given to scientific meetings and later published as mainly in Marseille, where he set up a laboratory “Three Lectures to Scientists” in an early issue of for computer music. He remains one of the most Perspectives of New Music (reprinted in Randall and outstanding composers of computer music. Boretz 2003), but I don’t think these were heard by Apart from the work of Max Mathews and ours at many of the people for whom he intended it. Princeton University, which derived from his work, The musical sophistication of Bell Labs changed the only other serious computer music research when Max hired Jean-Claude Risset, a French com- at that time was carried out by at poser and pianist with a very interesting background. , another extraordinary person He had studied composition with Andre´ Jolivet, but who had a seminal impact on the field. John he had also earned a degree in physics. He had a Chowning will be remembered at least for three great ear, and he brought a higher level both to the outstanding contributions, all of which he wrote study of sounds and to the music that he composed. definitive articles about: the simulation of moving He conducted a study on trumpet tones that was a sounds, digital reverberation, and FM synthesis. In real breakthrough. Through the process of applying a addition to these contributions, he wrote a number separate envelope to each of the partials of the tone, of interesting compositions, each of which had he was able to generate extremely realistic tones. He a completely different approach. Despite all this tested this by playing the sounds from behind a cur- work, and his establishing the Center for Computer tain to a room full of professional trumpet players. Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), he was They couldn’t tell the difference. Although I didn’t initially turned down for tenure at Stanford. Like think that the success of computer music should be 25 years earlier, whose dissertation judged by how well it imitates acoustic music, this was rejected by people who couldn’t understand it, test convinced many skeptics that computers could he was too far ahead of his colleagues; but similarly, produce interesting tones. they soon came to realize their mistake and reversed In 1968 and 1969, Jean-Claude Risset wrote two themselves. pieces that were probably the most outstanding This last episode about John Chowning’s orig- computer music yet produced. The first was Com- inally being denied tenure at Stanford University puter Suite from “Little Boy,” three movements of is emblematic of many of the issues that existed incidental music for a play on the life of Eatherly, the in the early days of computer music. I am amazed pilot of the plane that dropped one of the first atomic that some people feel that, because of the con- bombs on Japan. Besides the trumpet and other brass stant advancement of technology, computer music sounds that he had worked on in his studies, he had a would have happened anyway, whether or not Max variety of bell, drum, flute, and piano sounds, as well Mathews had done everything that he did to bring

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/comj.2009.33.3.41 by guest on 30 September 2021 it about. We cannot rerun history and find out when other researchers began to develop an interest what might have happened in that case; but to take in these things, they immediately came upon Max’s this specific situation as an example, here we have work and were able to build on that, and once that what almost everyone now would agree was one of happened, it grew like a snowball. Early composers the leading researchers in computer music at the and researchers like John Chowning, Jean-Claude time ejected from his position at a major research Risset, Jim Tenney, and I certainly recognized this, university because the musical community did not but many people who have never heard of Max understand the significance of his work. The musical Mathews should recognize it too. establishment at that time was never very enthu- siastic about computer music, which they regarded References as unmusical (which it is from a perspective of, say, 19th-century romanticism) and ultimately a threat Randall, J. K., and B. Boretz. 2003. Being About Music. to their own hegemony. There was never going to be Red Hook, New York: Open Space. adequate financial support to develop the resources Tenney, J. 1964. Meta+Hodos. New Orleans, Louisiana: and facilities that computer music needed from the Inter-American Institute for Musical Research, Tulane music schools and departments. More importantly, University.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/comj.2009.33.3.41 by guest on 30 September 2021