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.