Computers in the Analysis of Music

Abstract

In The Times of 24 April 1963 there appeared a headline which read: ‘The Computer as Composer?’. A mathematics lecturer in Bristol had been reading into a computer the elementary rules of melodic construction, in order that the computer should be able to compose, in return, well-constructed melodies. The lecturer had spoken of programming the characteristics of the great composers, as to melody and harmony, and of getting back ‘original compositions in their style’. We in this, the first paper to be published in the Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association on computers and their applications to music, are not going to make such extravagant propositions. We aim to give an introduction to the ways in which a computer may be used for musical analysis, and at the same time to convey the ‘feel’ of working with a computer. We shall present two analytical projects which have been designed specially for demonstration in this paper. But before presenting our analytical projects, a few preliminary words must be said about the computer and how we use it. We shall speak very briefly about the nature of a computer, about the way in which we submit work to it, about the way in which we present music for it to ‘read’, and about the way in which we tell the computer what it is to do with that music.