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Convention Paper

Music4F, an All-Fortran Music-Generating Computer Program

Authors: Roberts, Arthur

AES Convention 17 · Paper 397 · October 1965

Abstract

An adaptation of the BTL music-generating computer program, which we call MUSIC4F, has been written and tested. The original BTL program, MUSIC4, is written for the IBM 7094 in the BEFAP language, a Bell Laboratories version of FAP, and is not readily available even to other 7094's. The present program is entirely in FORTRAN, but maintains, almost unchanged, the input format of MUSIC4. Being in FORTRAN, it can readily be adapted to any computer with a FORTRAN compiler, and at least 16K of memory. The most recent version, 1965B, uses 32K. The program output tape contains the desired sound as instantaneous sampled values of the amplitude, taken at a high (carrier) frequency and written in binary records of fixed length (7040 samples in our case). Conversion to analogue output requires a second pass through the same computer as another one. The conversion system reads the digital tape contents into a buffer memory, and reads it out at a clock-controlled rate (i.e., the carrier frequency) into a digital-to-analogue converter, whose output can be directly recorded, after suitable filtering, on conventional audio tape.

Details

Published in
AES Convention 17
AES Convention
17
Paper number
397
Publication date
October 6, 1965
Affiliation
Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL (See document for exact affiliation information.)
Type
Convention Paper