Morning Concert: Computer Music from Stanford

On November 16 & 17, 1978, a concert of provocative and exciting new electronic tape pieces, produced at the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Center, was presented at the Stanford Museum of Art. Here is a program featuring a majority of those works by such composers as John Chowning, Gareth Loy, Paul Wieneke, Bill Schottstaedt, and kindly provided to KPFA by composer Michael McNabb of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Most of these works were realized using the Systems Concepts digital synthesizer and unlike the early electronic music of John Cage and David Tudor, this first generation of digitally synthesized music is smooth and soothing to the ear. The composers join Amirkhanian in the studio to discuss the various techniques they used to create their compositions. Also in this program is the San Francisco Bay Area premiere of “Phosphones”, a computer generated work by New York composer Emmanuel Ghent. This tape work, provided to KPFA by the composer, was created at the Bell Labs on the GROOVE Hybrid System.