"The Byte Book of Computer Music"

[ballyalley]

"The Byte Book of Computer Music," edited by Christopher P. Morgan is now available. This book was published in 1979. Here is a picture of the cover of the book:

 

 

Here is a description of "The Byte Book of Computer Music" from an ad in Byte magazine from April 1979 on page 87"

 

 

Turning Computer Programmers into Computer Composers!

 

For the first time: Hard-to-obtain computer music material has been collected into one convenient, easy-to-read book.

 

"The BYTE Book of Computer Music" combines the best from past issues of BYTE magazine with exciting new material of vital interest to computer experimenters. The articles range from flights of fancy about the reproductive systems of pianos to Fast Fourier transform programs written in BASIC and 6800 machine language. Included in this fascinating book, edited by Christopher P. Morgan, are articles discussing four-part melodies, a practical music interface tutorial, electronic organ chips, and a remarkable program that creates random music based on land terrain maps!

 

 

Here are various links about the book:

 

Ad from Byte (The above text is from this ad)

 

Review, "Computers and the Humanities," 1980, pg. 72-73.

 

Review, "Leonardo," Vol. 17, No. 1 (1984), pg. 62.

 

Review, "Computer Music Journal," 1980, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring, 1980), pg. 82-84.

 

Description from Back Cover, Table of Contents and Introduction

 

Finally, a link to the book itself. Careful, as this is a 30MB download:

 

"The Byte Book of Computer Music"

 

Enjoy this interesting and unusual book!

 

Adam

[ballyalley]

"The Byte Book of Computer Music," edited by Christopher P. Morgan is now available.

 

I am a member of a Yahoo Discusison Group for the APF MP-1000 and Imagination Machine. It's rather obscure discussion group. I suppose few members here are members THERE. A member of the group name Tom downloaded "The Byte Book of Computer Music" on April 19'th and gave some great feedback. Following is exactly what he wrote:

 

 

"I downloaded it. Quality scan -and worth the read. It's got a bit about mathematically "visualizing" how the music notes are laid out and some D-to-A conversion methods as well as driving solenoids. I like it better than a book about generalized interfacing since it presents the material with a purpose in mind (playing music). The parts with the 6502 can be translated to 6800 with little effort. The Altair section is BASIC. But, yay!, the FFT *is* in 6800 machine code - this is one of the first things I remember about the computer show I went to in 1980: a bar-graph with 16 bars of different frequencies and several colors. Alas, it didn't take much to impress me when I was a teenager. :-)"

[Keatah]

A lot of the light-show effects and music sequencing in Close Encounters of the Third Kind had its roots in the theories and ideas presented here. You'd be surprised the effect this publication had on shaping sound in motion pictures back then.

[ballyalley]

A lot of the light-show effects and music sequencing in Close Encounters of the Third Kind had its roots in the theories and ideas presented here. You'd be surprised the effect this publication had on shaping sound in motion pictures back then.

 

Can you give more specific information where I could read about this? While I think that this book is pretty interesting, I had no idea that it had such an effect!

 

Adam

[akator]

Thanks for posting this, it looks like a fun read