Sound-Generation by means of a Digital Computer
James C. Tenney · Journal of Music Theory · 1963
With the advent of modern automatic, high speed digital computers, it has become possible to generate a very large class of musical sounds and other acoustic signals with a degree of precision that isdifficult to achieve with ordinary electronic (analog) devices. The computer program described in this article was originally conceived and executed by M. V. Mathews, of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, in January, 1958.*1 Since that time, the program has been considerably revised and expanded, so that it now constitutes an extremely flexible musical medium, capable of producing virtually any sound or sequence of sounds that can be described or specified numerically. Note that this program is designed specifically for the utilization of the computer as a sound producing medium, not as a means of composing or analyzing music.