A Microcomputer-controlled Synthesis System for Live Performance

In my experience with electronic music, the studio environment has always presented a major problem. Music is a social phenomenon; the musical act reaches fruition in performance. To work in the studio producing works which have their existence only as recordings seems artificial to me. Yet the cost and technical sophistication of electronic music facilities, particularly where computation is involved, seems to imply that "Mohammed comes to the mountain," and this approach has been further emphasized by the development of general-purpose computer music systems which are as far as possible without personality of their own and can supposedly serve the needs of a variety of composers. Furthermore, even in those institutions which can afford such facilities it may be impossible to have a system dedicated totally to musical tasks, presenting additional problems of access.