Wasting
hardware:
DEC Microvax II/Ultrix,
IBM 3081/(CMS/TSO) mainframe,
DEC PDP-11/34 (for digital audio conversion)
software:
cmix, MIX
This was released as "music from the Winham Laboratory" on the
Centaur
Inner Voices
CD (Centaur CRC 2076, part of the CDCM Computer Music Series). I didn't
put the mp3 file on-line because it isn't entirely my decision to do that.
Paul Lansky had agreed to 'set' one of Richard Kostelanetz' "counting
poems" (Kostelanetz' voice is used as the source in the piece). Andy
and I were both graduate students working with Paul at the time, and
we had both beeen experimenting with LPC (Linear Predictive Coding), the
analysis/synthesis technique used to create the sounds in the piece.
I guess Paul was getting pressure from Kostelanetz to finish the piece,
and he asked if Andy and I would like to help.
Our contributions follow different parts of the narrator's "life story" --
I think Andy did early/middle childhood; Paul did late-middle childhood
through the teenage years; I did the 20's and Paul finished the
piece. Doing computer music back then was a fairly painstaking process,
nothing happened in real-time, so our work together was more like a team
on a research project than any kind of ensemble-like improvisation that
would happen today.
I'm not sure exactly which computer platform we used. This was about
the time when we shifted from work on the IBM mainframe to our own
pair of Microvax II computers, and I can't recall which machines we
used. Paul or Andy may know. Boy those were fun days!