Chowning's Music Project
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( CHOWNING 'S MUSIC PROJECT Stanford IMwerjity Libraries Dspt of Special Ocltectsws CoM Title Box £ Series q Fb< Fol. Title I I I ) Proposal for Research Project "-* in COMPUTER GENERATED MUSIC AND ACOUSTICAL ANALYSIS September 1966 - June 1970 Proposed by Leland Smith, Associate Professor of Music John Chowning, Lecturer in Music Department of Music School of Humanities and Sciences Stanford University February 11, 1966 APPROVAL SIGNATURES Leland Smith Associate Professor of Music W. L. Crosten Professor of Music and Executive Head of Department of Music For the University TABLE OP CONTESTS Abstract i Purpose of Project 1 Research Areas 3 Personnel 8 Budget 10 Appendix I Existing System and Work Appendix II Curricula Vitae 1 ABSTRACT The Music Department of Stanford University requests a grant in support of a research project involving application of scientific procedures and tools to music. Specifically, the grant would be used to develop and support an already existing computer based sound studio that will be equally effective in acoustical analysis and as a compositional medium. The initial grant is requested for a period beginning September, 1966 and ending September, 1970. 1 PROPOSAL FOR RESEARCH PROJECT IN COMPUTER GENERATED MUSIC AND ACOUSTICAL ANALYSIS Leland Smith and John Chowning Purpose of the Project For a number of years there has been a rapidly growing awareness of the vast possibilities offered to the musician through the production of computer generated sound. Sophisticated computers such as the IBM 7090 have become recognized as the most powerful tools yet developed for acoustical studies, the generation of sound used in electronic music, and even the development of the compositional procedures themselves that are especially well adapted to electronic media. The first step in realizing the full potential of computer generated music must be the development of practical methods of acoustical analysis so that known musical sounds may be readily synthesized. The establishment of a "catalogue" of programs for the simulation of conventional musical instruments and other "natural- sounds would serve as a point of departure for the programming of the limitless variety of sounds that may be produced by the computer. While acoustical analysis may be done in other ways it is apparent that when computers are utilized for this task the results produced will be of far greater accuracy than any others previously achieved. Work is currently being done here in the production of artificial reverb- eration. This is of great importance to electronic music since its "environment- must largely be self-contained. Detailed analysis of reverberation in connection with conventional music in its natural environment is clearly necessary. The out- come of such acoustical studies must surely prove important for related musical fields such as instrument construction, concert hall architecture, etc. In the basic program for computer generated music, as developed by Max Mathews at Bell Telephone Laboratories, the computer is used to generate samples of a desired sound-pressure wave. The samples are then passed through a digital to analog converter and recorded on magnetic tape. This use of the computer as a sound generator not only allows the composer a precise control of timing and wave form, but it also offers him a facile means of experimentation with complex programmed' circuits which would be prohibitively expensive and difficult to use in their analog form. There is also a practical advantage in that the "hardware" is fixed once 2 and for alls computer, D-A converter, and tape recorder. Therefore, the effectiveness of an investment of time and money is not lessened because of obsolescence, for when the present computer is replaced by a newer and faster machine, the basic approach to music generation need not be changed at all. Quite apart from the use of the computer as a generator of sound is its use ac an aid in compositional procedures. Much work is yet to be done in the deter- mination of just what elements (or parameters) of musical composition can successfully be dealt with by the computer. -It has become commonplace for composers of today to use a kind of mathematical process to provide themselves with a special repertory of musical materials (e.g. a variety of motives and their permutations) for each particular composition. The employment of the computer for this task would not only lead to a great saving of the composer's time but would most likely have a profound influence on his musical thinking. The computer will also greatly faci- litate the solution of problems in regard to tunings of intervals and scales both within our traditional 12 note system and the infinite number of microtonic systems that may be used in computer generated music. It is obvious that many technical problems will arise whose solution will require advanced knowledge of computer systems. For this reason one of the three research assistants involved will be drawn from the advanced pre-doctoral students in computer science. However this project being primarily directed toward the application of computer science to mußic generation, acoustical analysis, and compositional pro- cedures, the rest of the staff requested will be made up of highly trained musicians who have already attained success in producing music for conventional media. The final value of this project will be assessed as much in terms of the aesthetic quality of the music produced as in terms of the purely technical knowledge gained. Current Support Research in the application of computers to musical composition has been done at M. I. T. , Princeton, Illinois, the Bell Laboratories and other locations. At Stanford this work has been pursued during the past two years by John Chowning, Lecturer in Music, and doctoral candidate working in the composition seminar of Professor Leland Smith. Mr. Chowning' s work was supported during the first year by an IBM Fellowship and this year by a Stanford Wilson Fellowship. Other than a small grant for related equipment, there has been no other support for this research at Stanford up to this time. Given the potential of the present and future equipment of the Stanford Computation Center, the research done here thus far in computer generated music, and the active interest of the Department of Music in this research, 3 it is only reasonable to predict that Stanford will become one of the primary centers for the study and practice of the application of computer science to acoustics and the art of music. However this will only be possible if support for a long-range Beries of research projects is forthcoming. Because this represents such a revolu- tionary step in the field of music and the scope of the funds involved, it is unlikely that the sources for 3uch support will be found among those usually associated with university music departments. Rather, it would seem that those sources usually associated with scientific research would be better able to evaluate and provide for the implementation of such projects. If full advantage is to be taken of the momentum already present in these earliest stages of research and, especially, if the availability of certain key personnel (who might otherwise be forced to take employment elsewhere) is to be assured, it is essential that this project should begin operation in the autumn of 1966. Research Areas The project proposed below is conceived as falling into two two-year segments, the first emphasizing research into the potential of the computer for sound generation Bind acoustical analysis and the second emphasizing the development of practical applications of the knowledge previously gained. Of course there will inevitably be much overlapping in these general aims since each series of experiments will ordinarily produce some finished musical product and, later, each new application of the methods developed will raise new problems. to time-sharing. First two yearsi 1. Adaptation of the music program (1966-67, 1967-68) 2. Research in acoustical analysis: the problem of "listener fatigue" and the simulation of "natural" sounds, reverberation as related to "presence". 3. Development of peripheral programs tc allow more exact realization of the composer's aims. 1. Time-sharing. Until recently an electronic music studio has been conceived as a collection of analog equipment consisting of tape-recorders, wave form generators, mixers, etc. As mentioned above, work during the past few years has shown that certain digital computers are better able to generate classes of acoustical signals. At Stanford, 4 ■uaio generation has been done on an IHC 7090 computer. In this work it has bean noted that thera is one great diaadvantage in digital simulation aa oomparad to analog methods. Between the programming of one step in an experiment, its evaluation, and the programing of a second step, there is often a time delay of 24 hours or more. This delay imposes a severe limitation on the efficiency of the experimenter. Since evaluation of oomplex acoustical signals is for the most part subjective, it is generally necessary for the experimenter to have quick access to these signals which are the prime information resulting from any given step. The most common solution to this problem is a type of real-time music generation (M.1.T., Illinois, Argonne Lab., etc.), where the user is able to monitor and have some degree of control over the signal as the samples are being generated by the oomputer. There are two requirements basic to this approach: first, the user must have complete control of the computer; second, the rate at which the computer cal- culates the samples must not be less than the sampling rate. To work on a complex acoustioal problem such as artificial reverbation (multiple complex delay circuits) in real-time would mean that the user must have complete control of a computer of extraordinary power to generate samples at even a minimally effective rate.