Proteus Rebound
for
computer-generated sounds

by
Robert Morris

Program Notes

Proteus Rebound was composed and realized at the Center for Electronic and Computer Music at the University of Pittsburgh in 1981 while I was teaching in a workshop devoted to computer music composition. What was then a large computer was used, via Wayne Slawson's SYNTAL language, to generate control voltages and drive a set of sophisticated analogue synthesizers and mixers. While this technology is antiquated today, in its time it was the only way to control and rhythmically coordinate all aspects of sound in real time--changes of pitch, density, noise contrast, sound-color, duration, and apparent spacial motion; MIDI had not yet been invented and "online" computer sound synthesis in real time was still cumbersome and esoteric.

The piece sequences one and only one of every class of sound available from the synthesizer as programmed to receive the computer's control voltages. Hence the title, which also suggests the piece's flux of complex sounds, ever in transformation in all (sonic) directions.