Instant Music is

interactive Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

released by

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the ...

in 1986. It was developed first for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

, but then ported to the Apple IIGS and

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness W ...

. Instant Music was created and developed by Robert Campbell. The prototype was created on the Commodore 64 and EA producer Stewart Bonn championed its inclusion in EA's product offerings for the then upcoming Amiga platform. Instant Music allows the user to make variations on

song A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetiti ...

s played by the software. The program comes with several songs of a few genres. As the software plays a song, the player, by moving the

mouse A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...

up and down (or

joystick A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. A joystick, also known as the control column, is the principal cont ...

with some versions), can make variations in the current tones. The software makes sure that any variations don't result in un-

harmonic A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', t ...

tunes.

Reception

In December 1986,

Bruce Webster Bruce F. Webster is an American academic and software engineer. He is currently a principal at Bruce F. Webster & Associates and an adjunct professor in computer science at Brigham Young University. Early life and education Webster studied ...

's column in ''

Byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

'' magazine selected Instant Music as product of the month, calling it "an outstanding program." Webster praised Instant Music for turning the Amiga into "an intelligent electronic instrument" that allows "even an untalented hack" to create real music without much effort. Webster's only criticism was the key disk

copy protection Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media. Copy protection is most commonly found o ...

. '' AmigaWorld'' gave Instant Music a 1986 Editor's Choice Award, calling it "the most fun you can have with your Amiga and your ears." ''AmigaWorld'' praised Instant Music's ability to let non-musicians create impressive music. ''AmigaWorld'' also awarded Instant Music two tongue-in-cheek awards: "The Roll Over Beethoven Award ..For turning the complete idiot into a composer" and "Bob Ryan's Best Program in the History of Creation Award." ''

Compute! ''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', was an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET ...

'' stated that Instant Music "breaks new ground in computer entertainment software" by making it easy for nonmusicians to play music ... it really must be seen to be believed." The reviewer reported that he had begun to play his electric guitar again with the Amiga as accompaniment. Instant Music was mentioned in the ''

Computer Music Journal ''Computer Music Journal'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers a wide range of topics related to digital audio signal processing and electroacoustic music. It is published on-line and in hard copy by MIT Press. The journal is accompani ...

'' as an example of an "intelligent instrument".

Reviews

*''

Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine ''Asimov's Science Fiction'' is an American science fiction magazine which publishes science fiction and fantasy named after science fiction author Isaac Asimov. It is currently published by Penny Publications. From January 2017, the publicatio ...

'' v12 n7 (1988 07)https://archive.org/details/Asimovs_v12n07_1988-07/page/n17/mode/2up

References

External links

Instant Music screenshot
from the Apple IIGS 1986 software Computer music software Electronic Arts {{music-software-stub