Laurie Spiegel plays Alles synth - temporary replacement

This 1977 tape is one of the earliest examples of purely digital realtime audio synthesis. It manages to achieve an analog synth sounding quality, but it is entirely digital synthesis and signal processing.

The interactive software I wrote and am playing in this video recycles my keyboard input into an accompaniment to my continued playing, which is why I called it a "concerto generator". I use part of one of the keyboards for control data entry, and the small switches upper right to access pre-entered numerical patterns. The sliders are mainly pre-Yamaha FM synthesis parameter controls, for the number and amplitude and frequency of the FM pair modulators and carriers.

Until they restore the copy suffering from data corruption please look at this copy instead.

Comments can continue to be left on the original's page where there have been many views and comments views, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4T3eT...

Thanks for watching,

- Laurie

• Category

  Music

[PorticoMono]

Thank you for that video Laurie. I have never personally bought into the analogue v digital argument as there are pro's and cons to both. It's highly subjective and somewhat divisive. Different tools for different jobs. I also believe there is no such thing as a 'bad' sound. Just bad context. What are your thoughts on this?

[Laurie Spiegel]

"Good" or "bad" sounds is not something I think about. I just use sounds to make music and often enjoy listening to them. But, since you ask, I do think some sounds are "bad". There are sounds that are physically painful or harmful. There are sounds the military make that may be killing whales and dolphins. If a sound can be "bad" certainly those would be.

[Diego Leon]

Hi Laurie, I would like to know, the synthesizer that appears in this video functioned as a sequencer? , Than what I can see, quite sophisticated? and if not too much trouble could you describe me how it worked?, I would appreciate an answer yours..........by the way, you look very pretty in the video hehehe

[Laurie Spiegel]

Hi Diego. This instrument did not have fixed functions like a sequencer does. It's a computer that is running a program I wrote. Yes, there are some stored patterns, ones you can see me select with the switches in the top right corner, but most of what you hear is the software reprocessing what I play live on the keyboard and building a texture out of it, then playing it back to accompany me. That's why I called this software a "concerto generator". Too complex to explain more right here.

[6364gg2]

Put unix on it, and you've got the best computer in existance.

[Laurie Spiegel]

It wasn't that kind of general purpose computer. We could only program it remotely, from a PDP 11/45 in another part of the building over trunk cables. Those 11/45s did run early UNIX and the software I wrote for this interactive performance set-up was in an early version of C. - Laurie

[Laurie Spiegel]

"Synth porn"? I hope that isn't bad. This synth was built in 1977 by Hal Alles and his team at Bell Telephone Labs, Holmdel, NJ. It is all digital. There was no realtime digitial synthesis in the 1960s and this one-of-a-kind instrument was a first in many ways. Hal and BTL got a lot of patents out of it. There is a link on the video's page to a Computer Music Journal article that more fully describes it.

[56bluegold]

Very Good !

[Diego Leon]

Thank you Laurie for having cleared some doubts that I had about the instrument even though I had read something about it.

I wanted tell you that I'm making "space music" but musically very, very melodic. Here in Colombia, if I'm not mistaken, has never been done live that kind of music, and now I feel it is time for i to do that.

[Diego Leon]

I'm friend of a electroacoustic musician , his name is Ricardo Arias, is colombian, you have it as a friend too in facebook hehehe, thanks again for taking the time to respond.