Microcomputer-based music synthesis hardware is being developed at North Texas State University (NTSU). The work described in this paper continues this effort to develop hardware designs for inexpensive, but good quality, sound synthesizers. In order to pursue their activities, researchers in computer assisted instruction in music theory, psychoacoustics, and music composition need quality sound sources. The ultimate goal of my research is to develop good quality sound synthesis hardware which can fill these needs economically. This paper explores three topics: 1) how a computer makes music--a short nontechnical description; 2) what has been done previously--a review of the literature; and 3) what factors bear on the quality of microcomputer-based systems, including encoding of musical passages, software development, and hardware design. These topics lead to the discussion of a particular sound synthesizer which the author has designed.

A powerful and efficient algorithm has been designed to deal with the critical timing problem of the MIDI messages. This algorithm can convert note events stored in a natural way to MIDI messages dynamically. Only limited memory space (the buffer) is required to finish the conversion work, and the size of the buffer is independent of the size of the original sequence (notes). This algorithm's real-time variable properties suggest not only the flexible real-time controls in the use of musical aspects, but also the expandability to interactive multi-media applications. A compositional environment called MusicSculptor has been implemented in terms of this algorithm.