Computer music (was: Re: OT: Archiving data/video/movies/photos/oral history

From: Charles P. Hobbs <transit_at_lerctr.org>
Date: Sun Jun 4 09:55:49 2000

On Sat, 3 Jun 2000, R. D. Davis wrote:

> On Sat, 3 Jun 2000 CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com wrote:
> > I've got several CD's that uses the Index feature, but they're all
> > Bach CD's. (OK, one of them is Wendy Carlos playing,
> > but that counts, right?)
>
> Hey, that's all the more on-topic here, as (s)he performed music using
> a PDP-11! Is anyone else here (John W., does this still interest
> you?) interested in using PDP-11s for music/sound synthesis.
>

I don't know about PDP's, but when I was at UCSB, a "computer
music" class was offered, using "Csound" software running on
VAXen.

In 84-85, they used part of one the Computer Science Department's
machines (a VAX 11/780 running Unix). Csound required its own
disk drive, to keep the sound from being chopped up by other
processes goin on in that machine. It also had its own version
of Unix commands (for example, instead of mv or rm, you'd say
mvsf or rmsf, again because of the specific demands of the
csound software).

About a year later, the
Music Department got its own VAX. They switched to individual
Suun workstations a year or two after I had left in 1987.
Received on Sun Jun 04 2000 - 09:55:49 BST