Sound synthesis has an interesting history in both the analog and digital realms. Precursors to today’s sound synthesizers include a colorful variety of instruments and devices that generated sound electrically rather than mechanically. One of the earliest examples was Thaddeus Cahill’s Telharmonium (also called the Dynamophone), patented in 1897. The Telharmonium was a gigantic 200-ton contraption built of “dynamos” that were intended to broadcast musical frequencies over telephone lines. The dynamos, precursors of the tonewheels to be used later in the Hammond organ, were specially geared shafts and inductors that produced alternating currents of different audio frequencies controlled by velocity sensitive keyboards. Although the Telharmonium was mostly unworkable, generating too strong a signal for telephone lines, it opened people’s minds to the possibilities of electrically-generated sound.
The 1920s through the 1950s saw the development of various electrical instruments, most notably the Theremin, the Ondes Martenot, and the Hammond organ. The Theremin, patented in 1928, consisted of two sensors allowing the player to control frequency and amplitude with hand gestures. The Martenot, invented in the same year, was similar to the Theremin in that it used vacuum tubes and produced continuous frequencies, even those lying between conventional note pitches. It could be played in one of two ways: either by sliding a metal ring worn on the right-hand index finger in front of the keyboard or by depressing keys on the six-octave keyboard, making it easier to master than the Theremin. The Hammond organ was invented in 1938 as an electric alternative to wind-driven pipe organs. Like the Telharmonium, it used tonewheels, in this case producing harmonic combinations of frequencies that could be mixed by sliding drawbars mounted on two keyboards.
As sound synthesis evolved, researchers broke even farther from tradition, experimenting with new kinds of sound apart from music. Sound synthesis in this context was a process of recording, creating, and compiling sounds in novel ways. The musique concrète movement of the 1940s, for example, was described by founder Pierre Schaeffer as “no longer dependent upon preconceived sound abstractions, but now using fragments of sound existing concretely as sound objects (Schaeffer 1952).” “Sound objects” were to be found not in conventional music but directly in nature and the environment – train engines rumbling, cookware rattling, birds singing, etc. Although it relied mostly on naturally occurring sounds, musique concrète could be considered part of the electronic music movement in the way in which the sound montages were constructed, by means of microphones, tape recorders, varying tape speeds, mechanical reverberation effects, filters, and the cutting and resplicing of tape. In contrast, the contemporaneous elektronische musik movement sought to synthesize sound primarily from electronically produced signals. The movement was defined in a series of lectures given in Darmstadt, Germany, by Werner Meyer-Eppler and Robert Beyer and entitled “The World of Sound of Electronic Music.” Shortly thereafter, West German Radio opened a studio dedicated to research in electronic music, and the first elektronische music production, Musica su Due Dimensioni, appeared in 1952. This composition featured a live flute player, a taped portion manipulated by a technician, and artistic freedom for either one of them to manipulate the composition during the performance. Other innovative compositions followed, and the movement spread throughout Europe, the United States, and Japan.
There were two big problems in early sound synthesis systems. First, they required a great deal of space, consisting of a variety of microphones, signal generators, keyboards, tape recorders, amplifiers, filters, and mixers. Second, they were difficult to communicate with. Live performances might require instant reconnection of patch cables and a wide range of setting changes. “Composed” pieces entailed tedious recording, re-recording, cutting, and splicing of tape. These problems spurred the development of automated systems. The Electronic Music Synthesizer, developed at RCA in 1955, was a step in the direction of programmed music synthesis. Its second incarnation in 1959, the Mark II, used binary code punched into paper to represent pitch and timing changes. While it was still a large and complex system, it made advances in the way humans communicate with a synthesizer, overcoming the limitations of what can be controlled by hand in real-time.
Technological advances in the form of transistors and voltage controllers made it possible to reduce the size of synthesizers. Voltage controllers could be used to control the oscillation (i.e., frequency) and amplitude of a sound wave. Transistors replaced bulky vacuum tubes as a means of amplifying and switching electronic signals. Among the first to take advantage of the new technology in the building of analog synthesizers were Don Buchla and Robert Moog. The Buchla Music Box and the Moog Synthesizer, developed in the 1960s, both used voltage controllers and transistors. One main difference was that the Moog Synthesizer allowed standard keyboard input, while the Music Box used touch-sensitive metal pads housed in wooden boxes. Both, however, were analog devices, and as such, they were difficult to set up and operate. The much smaller MiniMoog, released in 1970, were more affordable and user-friendly, but the digital revolution in synthesizers was already under way.
When increasingly inexpensive microprocessors and integrated circuits became available in the 1970s, digital synthesizers began to appear. Where analog synthesizers were programmed by rearranging a tangle of patch cords, digital synthesizers could be adjusted with easy-to-use knobs, buttons, and dials. Synthesizers took the form of electronic keyboards like the one shown in Figure 6.1, with companies like Sequential Circuits, Electronics, Roland, Korg, Yamaha, and Kawai taking the lead in their development. They were certainly easier to play and program than their analog counterparts. A limitation to their use, however, was that the control surface was not standardized, and it was difficult to get multiple synthesizers to work together.
In parallel with the development of synthesizers, researchers were creating languages to describe the types of sounds and music they wished to synthesize. One of the earliest digital sound synthesis systems was developed by Max V. Mathews at Bell Labs. In its first version, created in 1957, Mathews’ MUSIC I program could synthesize sounds with just basic control over frequency. By 1968, Mathews had developed a fairly complete sound synthesis language in MUSIC V. Other sound and music languages that were developed around the same time or shortly thereafter include CSound (created by Barry Vercoe, MIT, in the 1980s), Structured Audio Orchestras Language (SAOL, part of MPEG 4 standard), Music 10 (created by John Chowning, Stanford, in 1966), cmusic (created by F. Richard Moore, University of California San Diego in the 1990s), and pcmusic (also created by F. Richard Moore).
In the early 1980s, led by Dave Smith from Sequential Circuits and Ikutaru Kakehashi from Roland, a group of the major synthesizer manufacturers decided that it was in their mutual interest to find a common language for their devices. Their collaboration resulted in the 1983 release of the MIDI 1.0 Detailed Specification. The original document defined only basic instructions, things like how to play notes and control volume. Later revisions added messages for greater control of synthesizers and branched out to messages controlling stage lighting. General MIDI (1991) attempted to standardize the association between program numbers and instruments synthesized. It also added new connection types (e.g., USB, FireWire, and wireless), and new platforms such as mobile phones and video games.
This short history lays the ground for the two main topics to be covered in this chapter: symbolic encoding of music and sound information – in particular, MIDI – and how this encoding is translated into sound by digital sound synthesis. We begin with a definition of MIDI and an explanation of how it differs from digital audio, after which we can take a closer look at how MIDI commands are interpreted via sound synthesis.