Computers, Composition and the Challenge of ”New Music

In the early mid-1980s, we developed a computer system called the Bol Processor (i.e. “BP”) to help us examine improvisatory methods used by North Indian tabla drummers (Kippen & Bel 1992). Designed for the portable Apple IIc, the rule-based BP1 was able to analyse musical input (in the form of tabla bols, or onomatopoeic syllables) as wel