mjeong1-Looking Outwards-11-Section A

“Bicycle for Two” by Max Mathews(1962)

Max Mathew is one of the early pioneers of Computer Music. He studied electrical engineering at California Institute of Technology and MIT. He developed Graphic 1, an interactive graphic sound system on which one could draw figure with light pen which can be converted into sound. This simplified the process of composing computer generated music. He also developed GROOVE, a first fully developed music synthesis system for interactive composition and realtime performance using 3C/Honeywell minicomputers. Through his inventions, he showed his admiration to live performance and his interest in what a computer can do to aid a performer. He made a controller, the Radio-Baton, to provide new ways for interpreting and performing traditional scores.

“Daisy Bell” is the most famous music composed by Mathews. In 1961,  He arranged accompaniment of the song by computer synthesized human voice through technology developed by John Kelly. My favorite music composed by Max is “Bicycle for two” because it has simple melody and rhythm that I enjoyed and I admire how Max use computer software to generate music based on compositional algorithm.

 

link to max mathews