The design and construction of a computer controlled music synthesis system

Abstract

Almost all of the recent research in the field of electronic composition and generation of music relies on the use of large computers. This work describes the design and development of a system to compose and generate music using a microcomputer together with a music synthesizer.The scope of this project included building a modular synthesizer with a wide range of modules, designing and building an inexpensive microcomputer suited to the task of music generation, and designing and building interfaces that would link synthesizer modules under computer control and provide digital control of the synthesizer parameters and the frequency and harmonics of the sound. The resulting system was capable of real-time music composition and generation, as well as having control of every parameter of the sound including the Fourier Series of each note, envelope shape, filter timbre and Q, reverb, distortion, etc. This complete system was built for under $2000, which is less than the cost of twenty hours of time on most large computer installations.