First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival

December 2, 2010 1:11 PM

"This site features the full audio from the rare LP record First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival, published by Creative Computing in 1979."

"The First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival was held August 25, 1978 as part of the Personal Computing '78 show. You can listen to the music online or download the songs in MP3 format. The navigation sidebar to the right includes the album's liner notes, which describe the event, the programmers, and the computers that created the music."

[Via -- you could say it's a tandem post.]

posted by not_on_display (6 comments total)

Back when I was learning to program in QBASIC, I transcribed music I was learning on the piano into programs using the SOUND command. Then I found out about PLAY and it blew. my. mind.
posted by backseatpilot at 1:15 PM on December 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

Interesting that a Bell Labs synthesized computer speech demonstration from 1963 was included on this compilation. Bell Telephone Laboratories recorded some interesting computer synthesizer demos years before this 1978/79 compilation, including this "soundsheet" or flexi disc.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:57 PM on December 2, 2010

Which is to say, nice find!
posted by filthy light thief at 2:00 PM on December 2, 2010

Also: These 1953-'69 recordings were performed by Raymond Scott on pioneering music machines designed and built by Scott, such as the Clavivox, Electronium, Circle Machine.
posted by Devils Rancher at 2:18 PM on December 2, 2010

This is awesome. I know some of these people. I got involved in PACS maybe a year after this performance & stayed active for several years. Thanks for the reminder of what it was like.
posted by scalefree at 5:34 PM on December 2, 2010

The Small Computers in the Arts Network, which developed out of this festival, has been dormant for a decade or so (since using computers in the arts isn't really a fringe activity any more!) - but they're bringing back the symposium in Philly next year!

(Disclosure: I was involved with SCAN from 1987 to '95!)
posted by moonmilk at 8:55 AM on December 3, 2010