Computer Music: a brief history about it

Computer music has emerged in the 50s with Max Mathews, an eletric engineer at Bell Labs. He is called "the father of computer music". Mathews is a leader in research of digital audio, synthesis and human-computer interaction in musical performance. He invented the first program extensively used for sound generation: MUSIC I.

Max Matthews

MUSIC I had just one voice, triangular waveform and have the control of sound duration, intensity and tuning.

In 1957 an IBM 704, in New York, played a composition of 17 seconds generated by MUSIC I. It was the first time that a computer played a sound. It had not inspiring notes but it was a great technical advance. MUSIC I has inspired the development of languages and APIs to work with sound in a computer:
- MUSIC II to V
- MUSIC 10, MUSIC 360, MUSIC 15
- Csound
- Java Sound

The traditional synthesizers (analog keyboards with oscillators and pots) evolved and became an amazing line of products that covers sound modules and synthesizers softwares.

In 1983 arised MIDI - the Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Its goal was to standardize the communication between electronic instruments.

Nowadays, computer music is widely used over internet. Web radio-stations and online music composition are some examples. Also it is been developed some instruments based on virtual reality, laser, artificial intelligence.

What future do we have ahead? New kinds of musical instruments, new styles of music, new forms to record music and sound, new forms to analyse a sound, new ways to use the sound ?