Researchers restore first computer music recorded on Turing’s machine

PanARMENIAN.Net - New Zealand researchers said Monday, September 26 they have restored the first recording of computer-generated music, created in 1951 on a gigantic contraption built by British genius Alan Turing, AFP reports.

The aural artefact, which paved the way for everything from synthesizers to modern electronica, opens with a staunchly conservative tune -- the British national anthem "God Save the King".

Researchers at the University of Canterbury (UC) in Christchurch said it showed Turing -- best known as the father of computing who broke the WWII Enigma code -- was also a musical innovator.

"Alan Turing's pioneering work in the late 1940s on transforming the computer into a musical instrument has been largely overlooked," they said.

The recording was made 65 years ago by a BBC outside-broadcast unit at the Computing Machine Laboratory in Manchester, northern England.

The machine, which filled much of the lab's ground floor, was used to generate three melodies; "God Save the King", "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and Glenn Miller's swing classic "In the Mood."

But when UC professor Jack Copeland and composer Jason Long examined the 30.5-centimetr acetate disc containing the music, they found the audio was distorted.

"The frequencies in the recording were not accurate. The recording gave at best only a rough impression of how the computer sounded," they said, according to AFP.

They fixed it with electronic detective work, tweaking the speed of the audio, compensating for a "wobble" in the recording and filtering out extraneous noise.