If computers be the spice of life ...

... play on!

Today we visited a friend, Charles, who is a composer here in Kunming. He is American and has run-up 82 years on the clock so far. After a healthy and delicious lunch with his wife Hillary - English - we retired to the study to listen to some compositions by Charles. First, the composer played a 'Saraband' on the piano. A little googling tells us that a saraband was an erotic dance for two that was very popular at royal courts in the 17th and 18th centuries. The eroticism was kept at bay by our surroundings

Then Charles introduced the next piece as too 'difficult' for him to play, so - the computer did. The sheet music was up on the screen, and the computer indicated where it was at with a moving horizontal line.

It's the first time I have seen such a system and I was hypnotised. The music was not hideously difficult, and the machine did its job faithfully. We liked the piece, but Hillary complained the computer never obeyed the score in the middle when the tempo was meant to increase for a while, then return to its original tempo. The music was all played at the same tempo.

Next, Charles introduced a cello piece, with a repetitive 'ground bass'. In this piece the computer sound could only approximate the sound of strings, but not fully reproduce their roundness or vary the tone as a performer with an instrument can. I had trouble getting past this to listen to the composition. Charles then played an orchestral arrangement of the piece, and I was amazed at the difference. It certainly gained life from this extension, but the volume variations and light'n'shade of a 'real' orchestra just wasn't there.

I have heard my poems read by a computer with a range of voices, and they suffered from the same dehumanising element. But just yesterday I saw an old Victor record player with the trumpet horn as its speaker and the old needle arm loaded and ready to play. On top were six 78 rpm records with Chinese covers. Dust covered everything. The Victor had been made in America, and I daydreamed through celluloid images how it came to China and how it has survived so much topsy-turvy history to end-up parked in an 'antique' shop in the Bird and Flower Market on Old Kunming Road in 2007. And now, today, we listened to a computer play fresh compositions of Western music in timbres and epths of a full orchestra.

Thanks, Charles, for sharing your music and your system with us today. We should train your little dog JoJo to sit like Nipper, the dog of His Master's Voice fame