{"id":983,"date":"2016-10-18T01:01:22","date_gmt":"2016-10-18T01:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/researchers-restore-first-ever-computer-music-recording.html"},"modified":"2016-10-18T01:01:22","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T01:01:22","slug":"researchers-restore-first-ever-computer-music-recording","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/researchers-restore-first-ever-computer-music-recording.html","title":{"rendered":"Researchers restore first ever computer music recording"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \"University<\/a>
\n University of Canterbury alumni composer Jason Long (L) and professor Jack Copeland pose for a photo in Christchurch, on September 6, 2016
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New Zealand researchers said Monday they have restored the first recording of computer-generated music, created in 1951 on a gigantic contraption built by British genius Alan Turing.\n <\/p>\n


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The aural artefact, which paved the way for everything from synthesizers to modern electronica, opens with a staunchly conservative tune\u2014the British national anthem “God Save the King”.<\/p>\n

Researchers at the University of Canterbury (UC) in Christchurch said it showed Turing\u2014best known as the father of computing who broke the WWII Enigma code\u2014was also a musical innovator.<\/p>\n

“Alan Turing’s pioneering work in the late 1940s on transforming the computer into a musical instrument has been largely overlooked,” they said.<\/p>\n

The recording was made 65 years ago by a BBC outside-broadcast unit at the Computing Machine Laboratory in Manchester, northern England.<\/p>\n

The machine, which filled much of the lab’s ground floor, was used to generate three melodies; “God Save the King”, “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and Glenn Miller’s swing classic “In the Mood”.<\/p>\n

But when UC professor Jack Copeland and composer Jason Long examined the 12-inch (30.5 centimetre) acetate disc containing the music, they found the audio was distorted.<\/p>\n

“The frequencies in the recording were not accurate. The recording gave at best only a rough impression of how the computer sounded,” they said.<\/p>\n

They fixed it with electronic detective work, tweaking the speed of the audio, compensating for a “wobble” in the recording and filtering out extraneous noise.<\/p>\n

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\n \"British<\/a>
\n British mathematician and computer scientist widely considered to be the father of modern computing, Alan Turing (1912-1954)
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“It was a beautiful moment when we first heard the true sound of Turing’s computer,” Copeland and Long said in a blog post on the British Library website.<\/p>\n

The two-minute recording can be heard here: blogs.bl.uk\/files\/first-recorded-computer-music\u2014-copeland-long-restoration.mp3<\/a><\/p>\n

It features short snippets of the tunes rendered in a slightly grating drone, like electronic bagpipes.<\/p>\n

There are also a number of glitches and when the music halts during the Glenn Miller number, a presenter comments: “The machine’s obviously not in the mood”.<\/p>\n

While Turing programmed the first musical notes into a computer, he had little interest in stringing them together into tunes.<\/p>\n

That work was carried out by a school teacher named Christopher Strachey, who went on to become a renowned computer scientist in his own right.<\/p>\n

Strachey recalled that Turing’s taciturn response upon hearing his machine play music was “good show”.<\/p>\n

Turing was a computer scientist, philosopher and cryptologist who played a crucial role in breaking the Nazi’s Enigma Code.<\/p>\n

As depicted in the Oscar-winning movie “The Imitation Game”, he was prosecuted for homosexuality and forced to undergo chemical castration, killing himself in 1954 at the age of 41.<\/p>\n

He was officially pardoned by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013.\n <\/p>\n

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\n Explore further:<\/b>
\n First digital music made in Manchester<\/a>\n <\/p>\n