What Is Computer Music?

Computer music can be defined as a type of electronic music which is produced either directly by a computer or indirectly by a computer-controlled synthesizer. Computers can produce a sound directly by storing the waveform of that sound as a series of varying numbers in its memory and then converting these numbers to voltages to drive a speaker. The string of numbers can be manipulated by the computer at very fast speeds which accounts for the amazing flexibility of computer synthesized music.

Although, theoretically, any sound could be produced in this manner, the programming can get rather tedious. But computers are also being used to sequence and to control the parameters of conventional synthesizer circuits. This is much easier, but perhaps a bit less flexible, than directly computing each waveform. This latter technique is the most popular today and accounts for most of the music on this album.