Scientists recover recording of first computer-generated music

Scientists at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand’s Christchurch have recovered the first recording of music generated by a computer. The recording is from 1951 and the music is from Alan Turing’s early form of a computer.

The machine may have been Turing’s, but the final programming work was done by teacher Christopher Strachey, The Guardian reports. Turing’s response to the result of a whole night’s work was only the “good show” comment. Strachey was able to get the machine to play music based on Turings Programmers’ Handbook for Manchester Electronic Computer Mark II, the scientists wrote in a blog post earlier. The recording was recorded on a 12″ acetate record from the BBC, but the sound, according to the scientists, was severely distorted. For example, the frequencies were mismatched, giving a faint impression of the original sound.

In the end, the researchers managed to restore the recording, including by adjusting its speed and removing noise. The result of their work can now be heard on SoundCloud. You can also hear that the recording does not go smoothly, because the playback of ‘God save the Queen’ stops briefly at the beginning. Other songs include ‘Baa, Baa Black Sheep’ and ‘In the Mood’ by Glenn Miller.

Turing’s machine was able to produce sounds through a special instruction that allowed the ‘hooter’, as Turing called the speaker, to display certain error codes. By repeating the instructions it was eventually possible to produce something that could be recognized by the human ear as a musical note. Repeating in different patterns then produced different musical notes. The Mark II was unable to produce all tones.