A Brief History of CDP

A Brief History of the Composers' Desktop Project

~ Key events from origin to the present ~

Origins

During the early part of the 1980's, those who eventually founded CDP began to use the first micros, usually for various forms of pre-compositionalprocessing. They were aware of the computer music software which had already been created on mainframes, and of the work of such seminal organisations as GRM (Groupes de Researches Musicales) and IRCAM, especially after a concert GRM presented in York. These interests and inspirations came to a head when the Atari computer was brought out with a MIDI interface and a cartridge port with a very fast burst rate (intended for games applications). Once all involved had purchased the same computer, the rest followed with an unstoppable logic and necessity.

Software Evolution

AUGUST 1986 - feasibility study to determine if it was possible:

to port CMUSIC from UNIX mainframe to the Atari ST

to create a hardware I/O device for sound for the Atari ST

OCTOBER 1986 thru MAY 1987 - establishing the core system:

the presence of CMUSIC on the System confirmed

the initial set of 'Groucho' signal processing routines written (A Bentley).

the first four spectral manipulation programs written by Trevor Wishart while at IRCAM working on VOX-5.

a drawing program for additive synthesis was written (R Orton).

a graphic desktop environment was written (R Fischman).

the SoundSTreamer was designed and manufactured to provide sound I/O for the system, in conjunction with the Sony PCM501 (D Malham).

the soundfiling system was written to provide sound storage and software for accessing the SoundSTreamer; a number of Unix-like system utilities were also provided (M Atkins).

March 1987 – CDP established as a formal organisation. The first versions of the 'CDP System' were delivered in June 1987.

April 1988 – The Gulbenkian Foundation awards a £17,000 start-up grant, which enables CDP to get established. Needless to say, we were and remain tremendously grateful for this grant.

1989 – the first upgrade was issued, expanding the Groucho signal processingpackage and the programs to manipulate spectral analysis data, and adding Csound as a software synthesis 'engine' in addition to Cmusic.

1991 - a second upgrade was issued, with improvements to existing softwareand more additions.

1993 – The CDP System was ported to the Atari Falcon environment, witha port of CMUSIC to the TT/Falcon030 by Gerhard Wolfstieg.

1994 – The CDP System was ported to the PC and SGI environments underthe guidance of Martin Atkins, CDP's system programmer, who created a 'portability library' to accomplish this task.

1995 – major revisions to almost all the CDP programs were undertaken, and about 70 new programs added to the System, forming a third upgrade.

1996-1999 – This period has been entirely taken up with the task of preparingCDP code for incorporation into a graphic user interface, and the designof a framework mechanism for that interface. With such a large body ofprograms, many of which have had complex command line structures, this proved to be a mammoth task. GrainMill was first issued in 1997.

2000-2001 – The first versions of the new graphic user interfaces were distributed. These have been teething over the past year, and a number of revisions and additions made to the main body of the software. The full Release 4 (Release 4.5) was finalised in November 2001.

2002-2005 – Most of this period was spent expanding and documenting the sound transformation software base, becoming Release 5.0. Also during this period, Richard Dobson assembled several CDP Spectral Domain programs into the real-time plugin Spectral Transformer, which is part of Cakewalk's very powerful Project 5 (under licence). Spectral Transformer was consistently praised in the various reviews. Realising the CDP modules in this way brought home their originality and extremely versatile functionality. Project 5 also achieved an effective balance between software synthesis, MIDI facilities and sound transformations, which illustrates the hybrid environment in which many make use of the CDP software.

Relocation

In September 1996 CDP relocated from York to Bristol at the invitation of the Partnership for Advanced ComputingTechnologies (PACT). While there we were mostly pre-occupied with the task of developing a graphic alternative for the CDP system, in creating the initial adaptations of some of its relatively advanced software for general educational use, and with various initiatives involving other groups researching and developing software under the broad umbrella of audio-visual and multimedia applications. CDP moved out of PACT in January 2000 and is still located at Goodwood Way in Chippenham, Wiltshire.

Current State of Play

The Project network now comprises more than 450 members in 21 countries. About 60 of these are educational institutions, and the remainder are individuals. The Release 5.0 software package now numbers 309 programs, of which all but a handful have been contributed by CDP members. The CDP System is continuing to evolve, as outlined above.

CDP has been awarded a total of £21,000 in grants during 1997-1998 towards its graphic educational projects: £500 from the Sonic Arts Network (as seed funding), £5000 from the Arts Council of England, and £15,500 from the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust. CDP was also greatly supported by the office space at PACT, which was provided without charge. This support was very much needed by CDP at this time, and is very, very deeply appreciated by the whole CDP membership. Recent grant applications have not been successful.

Last updated: 5 April 2005