1.0 History of the LeagueThe League of Automatic Music Composers came about through a confluence
of technological change and radical aesthetics. In the mid-1970s,
composers active in the experimental music scene centered loosely around
Mills College in Oakland were greeted by the arrival of the first personal
computers to hit the consumer market. These machinescalled microcomputers
because of their small size compared to the mainframes of academia and
industrycould be bought for as little as $250. Their availability
marked the first time in history that individuals could own and operate
computers free from large institutions. To the composers in this community
it was a milestone event. Steeped in a tradition of experimentation, they
were busy at the time building homebrew circuits for use in 'live' electronic
music performance. The behavior of these circuits often determined the
primary character of the music. The idea of using the electronic system
itself as a musical actor, as opposed to merely a tool, had started with
composers like David Tudor and Gordon Mumma. A natural continuation of
their example could also be found in the local composers who performed
with self-modifying analog synthesizer patches as well. One of these players
was the late Jim
Horton (1944-1998).
Horton was a pioneering electronic music composer and radical intellectual
who was first out of the blocks in purchasing one of the new machines--a
KIM-1
in 1976. Horton's forward-looking enthusiasm for the KIM quickly infected
the rest of the community. In a short time many of us acquired KIMs and
began teaching ourselves to program them in 6502 machine language. Programs
were entered directly into the KIM's 1K of memory via a hexadecimal keypad,
and saved onto audio cassette--the cheaper the cassette machine the better.
Loading programs back into the KIM's memory from cassette was a notoriously
flaky proposition often requiring frequent re-tuning of the control circuit
onboard the KIM. There was a strong feeling of community among the composers
who were learning to program these tiny computers. This shared spirit
was particularly helpful when it came to getting a foothold on the more
esoteric, and sometimes pesky, aspects of KIM-1 operation. |
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"The scene at Mills seemed worlds away from the electronic music studios I had been exposed to. They still had the public access studio going at that time, and they let me try out the electronic equipment myself and showed me how things worked. David (Behrman) was rehearsing with Rich Gold, John Bischoff, and Jim Horton, who were using tiny computers called KIMs. They were not exactly my image of what computers were likea board about the size of a sheet of paper with a tiny keypad and a few chips." |