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 the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

released by

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

in 1986. It was developed first for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

, but then ported to the Apple IIGS and

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 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 ...

. 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 performed by the human voice. The voice often carries the melody (a series of distinct and fixed pitches) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs have a structure, such as the common ABA form, and are usu ...

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. Also known as the control column, it is the principal control devic ...

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

harmonic In physics, acoustics, and telecommunications, a harmonic is a sinusoidal wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'' of a periodic signal. The fundamental frequency is also called the ''1st har ...

tunes.

Reception

In December 1986, Bruce Webster'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 un ...

'' 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, is any measure to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media. Copy protection is most commonly found on vid ...

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

Reviews

*'' Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine'' v12 n7 (1988 07)

References

External links

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