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Raymond Scott is pretty much the "grandfather" of computer generated music. His mechanical composing tools predate just about everything else in the genre. http://www.raymondscott.com/

Brought the idea out of the milspec salvage yards after WWII and got the ball rolling on multi-track recorder (which is what a video tape recorder is). Besides that, he was a brilliant man. http://raymondscott.com/timeline.html

Composer and inventor Raymond Scott invented a similar machine in the 1950's called the "Circle Machine". See it at http://raymondscott.com/circle.html

Oh, that link should have been: Raymond Scott's circle machine.

So, to repeat: this 1950s contraption used a photocell at the end of a rotating arm: " The intensity of each light in this circle is individually adjustable. At the tip of the arm there is a photo cell. This cell is a part of an electronic sound generating system, so adjusted that the more light the cell 'sees' the higher the pitch of the sound produced. The cell also moves around in a circle at adjustable speeds. One of the controls, above the circle of lights, changes the pitch center of the complete cycle when required. As you will notice, there are many variable functions possible."

The link has sound samples.

I will use the Preview button. I will use the Preview button. I will use the Preview button...

I'd argue that tape editing is hardly the birth. If you take the later development of sequencers as the real birth credit gets muddy, but perhaps it was Raymond Scott...

1. Police/Fire Scanner
2. Books on Tape
3. White Noise
4. Foreign Language Lessons
5. NPR
6. Raymond Scott - Soothing Sounds for Baby
7. Place Microphone in Center of Office
8. Train Sounds
9. Bubble Wrap
10. Car Dealership Commercials
11. Make a "People On Hold" Party Line
12. Heavy Breathing
13. These
14. Fax Machine Sounds
15. "Guess The DTMF" Game
16. Funny Answering Machine Outgoing Messages
17. Phone Sex
18. Bass Test CDs
19. Trivia Questions
20. The Sound of One Hand Clapping

Well, I didn't mean to come off sounding snobbish, it just seems that as of lately most electronic music is the same repetitive beat stuff that they ship in institutional size cans to raves. Actually, I'm a big fan of Kraftwerk ever since they first came out. You can thank Man Parrish for putting the Kraftwerk sound into more mainstream music. As far as NIN goes, my introduction to the modern techno scene came through collecting all the old Amiga MOD/MED files I could get my hands on. The guy down the hall had some NIN pumping on his stereo, and, thinking he had a new MOD I didn't have, I ran over... "Yo, dude, what's that you're playing?" and I have been hooked ever since. And I was delighted when the CSound book listed these bands as recommended listening. But people seem to forget about Raymond Scott, who gave the world electronic music in the first place, as well as the music for cartoons.

I've had a link to Raymond Scott's web site in my sig off-and-on. He's the guy who wrote so much of the music of looney tunes, although ironically he "probably" died not knowing that he was immortalized because of it! In particular, he wrote "powerhouse" which is the "mechanical, assembly line" music you would know right off if you heard it. He also wrote "The Toy Trumpet" and "Dinner Music for Cannibals".

But he's also an interesting guy in his own right. He probably developed the first music sequencer, and some of the first synthesizers. In fact, a young Bob Moog was inspired by visits to the his massive music laboratory.

I highly recommend checking out his site (although he died sometime in the 90s).

Excellent! I always wondered what that tune was. It was a great background music from something mechanical.

Here's a link to the tune I found on google: here.

This HAS to be one of the most famous tunes that no one has the slightest clue what the name of it is.

• Culture clashes between sub groups in the industry (Mac vs PC, vi vs emacs, MS vs Linux) and the characteristics of the individual subgroups
• Culture Clashes between subgroups in terms of levels of expertise (newbies vs experts vs old timers) as a side note, the phenomena of the "September that never ended" is educational
• Culture clashes with the outside world, this starts touching into the hacker ethis, etc. but also is illustrated in things like comments made to Babbage (along the line of, "if we put in the wrong questions, will it still give us the right answers?")
• The size of some the communities often has been much smaller than would have been imagined from the eventual impact. The original hacker communities in the 1980's did not number thousands, more like a few hundred, with a few dozen core experts. As such, there is often a certain provicialism that creeps in from time to time. The world is often not seen as being as big and diverse as it really is.
• The resemblance of some communities to a religion (Mac evangalism, for example. But there are many others) and the clashes this creates.
• The unsung hereos, people who invented the basic technology, and who never saw a decent return. (I still thing everyone should send the guy who invented the mouse a buck or two just to say "thank you!". This should be a community project of some sort)
• The Dead Media Project, found at deadmedia.org (and as noted earlier here on /.), is an interesting overview on the obsolescence of technology. the articles on the Information technology of ancient Athens are particularly worthwhile. (Seen here in the numeric listing as items 38.6 - 39.0)
• Also, Scientific American had a recent storythat mused about being an information technology worker in Mesopotamia, crunching the numbers that made the cities work.
• The generations of older technologies, including the older tube computers, relay based logic (which is wild in it's own right), and even music technologies such as used by Raymond Scott, (teacher of Robert Moog)

The only probblem would be setting up for road shows. but for studio work, it would be great.

Maybe I can build me a wall of sound like Raymond Scott did.

(side note: Raymond Scott invented the sequencer, and was a teacher of Robert Moog. His novelty tunes were used widely by Carl Stalling for themes in many Warner Bros cartoons.)

The only probblem would be setting up for road shows. but for studio work, it would be great.

Maybe I can build me a wall of sound like Raymond Scott did.

(side note: Raymond Scott invented the sequencer, and was a teacher of Robert Moog. His novelty tunes were used widely by Carl Stalling for themes in many Warner Bros cartoons.)

While Bob Moog was important (and does rule), there's also another guy whom Moog worked with in the late 60's and early 70's who is probably the biggest unsung hero in the history of electronic music.

Hop over to RaymondScott.com and have a look. This guy built a goddamn self-programmable synthesizer out of thousands of pieces of discarded telephone switching equiptment in his basement before the era of MIDI. A 6 foot tall, 30-foot long array of telephone switching relays, tone circuits and oscillators to be exact.

Scott is also the person credited with inventing the sequencer, and ambient electronic music in the early 1960's..A double-album set of pure electronic music designed for babies to listen to, believe it or not.

For those of you who want to hear what the giant array of telephone relays sounds like, go here. Decompress the file and cat it to >/dev/audio ...its crude, but its all I can do on short notice. :) Its terrible quality, but, thats what buying CD's are for. I basically pointed my laptop at my stereo and recorded it straight off a console prompt. Hehehe..



Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)

CDs are available, apparently. I'm going to get me one.

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