Turenas : the realization of a dream

The culmination of two research paths, Turenas (1972), embodies both sound localization (begun in 1964) and Frequency Modulation (FM) synthesis (begun in 1967). Illusory motion of sound in space was a musical goal from the very beginning of my work with computers, a goal that led to a number of perceptual insights that not only set up my discovery of FM synthesis but insights that have enriched my thinking about music ever since. In tracing the long compositional trajectory of Turenas, I trace the connections between the work of Mathews, Schroeder, and Risset, at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and the development of musical tools by David Poole, Leland Smith and myself within the research community at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (A.I. Lab).