Future Sounds - Keynote Chowning

John Chowning: FM Synthesis – Fifty Years
Keynote at the symposium «The Future Sound of Pop Music», Bern University of the Arts, 30.11.–2.12.2017

Its discovery in 1967 led to increasing interest in producing music by computers within the academic world because of its efficiency and the breadth of possible sounds. The development of the technique then led to interest from the music industry of which only one company understood the implications of the sampling theorem and also supported a research environment to exploit FM synthesis – Yamaha. With the introduction of the all-digital and programmable DX7 in 1983, computer music was democratized, no longer confined to large institutional computers. The collaboration between Yamaha and Stanford University was preceded by collaboration between disciplines within Stanford and the formation of CCRMA in 1974, where broad applications of computer technology to acoustics and music were pursued.
This paper shall give insights into the discovery and development of FM and shed new light on the actual projects at Stanford concerning sound studies and technology and the role of the institution in connection to other important researchers.

John Chowning studied music at Wittenberg University and composition in Paris for three years with Nadia Boulanger. In 1966, he received the doctorate in composition from Stanford University, later he discovered the frequency modulation (FM) algorithm in which both the carrier frequency and the modulating frequency are within the audio band. This breakthrough in the synthesis of timbres allowed a very simple yet elegant way of creating and controlling time-varying spectra. Beginning in 1966 Chowning taught computer-sound synthesis and composition at Stanford University's Department of Music and was the founding director in 1974 of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), one of the leading centers for computer music and related research. For his work, he received numerous awards.

Video: FSP Interpretation
Sound: Markus Gfeller