The "Argonne Chime"

[Graphical representation of the

The Argonne Chime is the first musical composition to result from the Scientific Sonification project in Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science Division and the first musical composition ever produced on the IBM Scalable POWERparallel (SP) system.

The "Argonne Chime" was composed by Sever Tipei, professor of music theory and composition at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, and produced jointly with Hans G. Kaper and Juan M. Restrepo, both of Argonne. It received its world premiere at the opening concert of the eighth season of the Arts at Argonne Chamber Music Series on October 15, 1995.

The chime consists of seven sounds,

spelling A R G O N N E
in musical sounds a re (= d) g sol (= g) (percussive) e (low gong)

Six sounds have six partials (harmonics); one sound has 16 partials. The partials have different degrees of vibrato, tremolo, frequency transients, and amplitude transients. Individual sound envelopes vary from percussive to sustained. Various degrees of reverberation and channel placement (left, right, center) suggest a realistic environment.

The sounds were produced on Argonne's massively parallel SP system , using the sound synthesis program DIASS_M4C . DIASS_M4C is part of an Environment for Music Composition , developed by Tipei, for computer-assisted music composition, automatic printing/editing of music, digital sound synthesis, and sound visualization.

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