Computer sound synthesis

The production of electronic sounds by digital techniques is rapidly replacing the use of oscillators, synthesizers, and other audio components (now commonly called analogue hardware) that have been the standard resources of the composer of electronic music. Not only is digital circuitry and digital programming much more versatile and accurate, but it is also much cheaper. The advantages of digital processing are manifest even to the commercial recording industry, where digital recording is replacing long-established audio technology.

The three basic techniques for producing sounds with a computer are sign-bit extraction, digital-to-analogue conversion, and the use of hybrid digital–analogue systems. Of these, however, only the second process is of more than historical interest. Sign-bit extraction was occasionally used for compositions of serious musical intent—for example, in Computer Cantata (1963), by Hiller and Robert Baker, and in Sonoriferous Loops (1965), by Herbert Brün. Some interest persists in building hybrid digitalanalogue facilities, perhaps because some types of signal processing, such as reverberation and filtering, are time-consuming even in the fastest of computers.

Digital-to-analogue conversion has become the standard technique for computer sound synthesis. This process was originally developed in the United States by Max Mathews and his colleagues at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the early 1960s. The best known version of the programming that activated the process was called Music 5.

Digital-to-analogue conversion (and the reverse process, analogue-to-digital conversion, which is used to put sounds into a computer rather than getting them out) depends on the sampling theorem. This states that a waveform should be sampled at a rate twice the bandwidth of the system if the samples are to be free of quantizing noise (a high-pitched whine to the ear). Because the auditory bandwidth is 20–20,000 hertz (Hz), this specifies a sampling rate of 40,000 samples per second though, practically, 30,000 is sufficient, because tape recorders seldom record anything significant above 15,000 Hz. Also, instantaneous amplitudes must be specified to at least 12 bits so that the jumps from one amplitude to the next are low enough for the signal-to-noise ratio to exceed commercial standards (55 to 70 decibels).

Music 5 was more than simply a software system, because it embodied an “orchestration” program that simulated many of the processes employed in the classical electronic music studio. It specified unit generators for the standard waveforms, adders, modulators, filters, reverberators, and so on. It was sufficiently generalized that a user could freely define his own generators. Music 5 became the software prototype for installations the world over.

One of the best of these was designed by Barry Vercoe at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the 1970s. This program, called Music 11, runs on a PDP-11 computer and is a tightly designed system that incorporates many new features, including graphic score input and output. Vercoe’s instructional program has trained virtually a whole generation of young composers in computer sound manipulation. Another important advance, discovered by John Chowning of Stanford University in 1973, was the use of digital FM (frequency modulation) as a source of musical timbre. The use of graphical input and output, even of musical notation, has been considerably developed, notably by Mathews at Bell Telephone Laboratories, by Leland Smith at Stanford University, and by William Buxton at the University of Toronto.

There are also other approaches to digital sound manipulation. For example, there is a growing interest in analogue-to-digital conversion as a compositional tool. This technique allows concrete and recorded sounds to be subjected to digital processing, and this, of course, includes the human voice. Charles Dodge, a composer at Brooklyn College, has composed a number of scores that incorporate vocal sounds, including Cascando (1978), based on the radio play of Samuel Beckett, and Any Resemblance Is Purely Coincidental (1980), for computer-altered voice and tape. The classic musique concrète studio founded by Pierre Schaeffer has become a digital installation, under François Bayle. Its main emphasis is still on the manipulation of concrete sounds. Mention also should be made of an entirely different model for sound synthesis first investigated in 1971 by Hiller and Pierre Ruiz; they programmed differential equations that define vibrating objects such as strings, plates, membranes, and tubes. This technique, though forbidding mathematically and time-consuming in the computer, nevertheless is potentially attractive because it depends neither upon concepts reminiscent of analogue hardware nor upon acoustical research data.

Another important development is the production of specialized digital machines for use in live performance. All such instruments depend on newer types of microprocessors and often on some specialized circuitry. Because these instruments require real-time computation and conversion, however, they are restricted in versatility and variety of timbres. Without question, though, these instruments will be rapidly improved because there is a commercial market for them, including popular music and music education, that far exceeds the small world of avant-garde composers.

Some of these performance instruments are specialized in design to meet the needs of a particular composer—an example being Salvatore Martirano’s Sal-Mar Construction (1970). Most of them, however, are intended to replace analogue synthesizers and therefore are equipped with conventional keyboards. One of the earliest of such instruments was the “Egg” synthesizer built by Michael Manthey at the University of Århus in Denmark. The Synclavier later was put on the market as a commercially produced instrument that uses digital hardware and logic. It represents for the 1980s the digital equivalent of the Moog synthesizer of the 1960s.

The most advanced digital sound synthesis, however, is still done in large institutional installations. Most of these are in U.S. universities, but European facilities are being built in increasing numbers. The Instituut voor Sonologie in Utrecht and LIMB (Laboratorio Permanente per l’Informatica Musicale) at the University of Padua in Italy resemble U.S. facilities because of their academic affiliation. Rather different, however, is IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique), part of the Pompidou Centre in Paris. IRCAM, headed by Pierre Boulez, is an elaborate facility for research in and the performance of music. Increasingly, attention there has been given to all aspects of computer processing of music, including composition, sound analysis and synthesis, graphics, and the design of new electronic instruments for performance and pedagogy. It is a spectacular demonstration that electronic and computer music has come of age and has entered the mainstream of music history.

In conclusion, science has brought about a tremendous expansion of musical resources by making available to the composer a spectrum of sounds ranging from pure tones at one extreme to random noise at the other. It has made possible the rhythmic organization of music to a degree of subtlety and complexity hitherto unattainable. It has brought about the acceptance of the definition of music as “organized sound.” It has permitted composers, if they choose, to have complete control over their own work. It permits them, if they desire, to eliminate the performer as an intermediary between them and their audiences. It has placed critics in a problematic situation, because their analysis of what they hear must frequently be carried out solely by their ears, unaided by any written score.