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- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ames!lll-winken!telecom-request
- From: jharuni@micrognosis.co.uk (Jonathan Haruni)
- Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
- Subject: Re: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature ...
- Message-ID: <telecom13.41.5@eecs.nwu.edu>
- Date: 23 Jan 93 14:16:17 GMT
- Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
- Reply-To: jharuni@micrognosis.co.uk
- Organization: Micrognosis International, London
- Lines: 51
- Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
- X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
- X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
- X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 13, Issue 41, Message 5 of 12
-
- In article <telecom13.31.11@eecs.nwu.edu>, PAT wrote:
-
- [about a Sun computer performing music to a live audience]
-
- > When the work was finished, they introduced the fellow who had
- > programmed it. I left the program absolutely higher than a kite; it
- > was so wonderful!
-
- Please elaborate ... was the Sun controlling some sort of Synthesizer card
- which the guy had written a command script for? Was it controlling a
- MIDI controller plugged into some commercial synth? Or was it just playing
- some digital recording? What exactly did the guy "program"? What was
- so wonderful? What was the big file server for? Why was this more
- impressive than a tape recorder?
-
-
- Jonathan Haruni
-
-
- [Moderator's Note: It was a series of great big executables which were
- called up one after another for each of the various movements (or
- parts) of the musical work. I think the executables were kept on the
- storage device which was connected to the computer until it was their
- turn to be used. It should be noted that "Pictures at an Exhibition"
- is about thirty minutes in length, and is composed of several
- movements, or 'sketches' each ranging in length from a minute or two
- to several minutes. There was no synthesizer card or MIDI or similar
- device attached. The executables sent pulses to speakers attached to
- the computer (actually, what would have been an audio output on the
- computer was fed to the building sound system) and the speed and
- duration of the pulses caused the speakers to make the sounds required
- to resemble the music. That is an overly simplistic explanation of
- what makes speakers work, but you get the idea. What was so nifty to
- me was the total lack of any external equipment; just electricity sent
- to an output causing the speakers to vibrate the way he wanted it.
-
- I used to do the same thing with my little Apple ][+ ten years ago,
- poking binary values into RAM in a certain order then calling the
- routine so that musical sounds would come out of the speaker, but
- never of the magnitude of the performance I attended. The Apple had a
- cassette jack on the back to load programs from tape. By making use of
- the little two (or maybe four) byte A/D converter inside, I found I
- could digitize my voice using a microphone plugged into the cassette
- jack then save the resulting binary on a floppy disk and play it back
- through the speaker on the Apple. Because this sort of thing is of
- interest to me, I find fascinating anyone who can write sufficient
- executable script to transcribe a technically difficult piece of music
- of 30 minute's duration. A tape recording would not have been the
- same. Part of the pleasure was hearing the live performance and seeing
- the 'performer'. PAT]
-