Digital computers are the most significant innovation in electronic music. These are Data processing and Information retrieval. These include music note processing and music printing. Computer Music Association was formed with hundreds of members. Each year, the International Computer Music Conference was held.
Sound synthesis and composition are complementary processes. The first can lead to the second. It acts as a data translator.
Computer composition is not a style. Computer composition is not a style.
Composers need to have a complete library of basic compositional operations written as closed-subroutines. It is important to specify with precision which units or determinations are used in artistic composition. This is in contrast to mathematics, where subroutines could be defined using traditional methods of thinking. Music’s definition of modules leaves more advanced thinkers to their own devices.
Computer-composed music can be seen in the Illiac Suite For String Quartet (1957). It was composed by Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson.
Two compositions that are very different, ST/10-1.080262 (1962), YannisXenakis (1968) and HPSCHD(1968), John Cage and Hiller, demonstrate two later approaches to computer composition. It was based on statistical calculations and a Poisson allocation, to assign pitches, durations and playing instructions and determine the instruments. The first set of sound tracks was created by rolling a die. It had 51 monophonic lines and microtone tunes. These were based on theories about Mozart’s melodic writing.
Hiller has been working on compositional programming techniques for a cycle of two-hour works called Algorithms II. It was published in 1977. The realization of Charles Ives’s most ambitious major composition relies heavily on computer processing. It was preserved in a diverse collection of 45 sketch pages.
The boundary between compositional music and sound synthesis is blurring as more sound technology advances. Barry Truax, a Canadian composer, is one example.