MUSYS

MUSYS was an early music synthesis language designed by Peter Grogono for EMS in London in the early 1970s for composing and performing electronic music. "The heart of MUSYS is a simple yet powerful macroprocessor", an idea influenced by the paper "A General Purpose Macrogenerator" by Christopher Strachey. The more general purpose language Mouse later evolved from it.

MUSYS was designed to run programs on EMS' two DEC PDP-8 minicomputers. Electronic music compositions using MUSYS were publicly performed in London in the early 70s in venues such as Queen Elizabeth Hall. The language was awarded a 1,000,000 lire prize for Electronic Music Software by Radio Milano in 1972.

Examples

Historical

Macro:

 NOTE O1.%A. A1.%B. E1.%B/2+7. T1.%C-1. E1.%B/2+2<7. T1.1. T=T+%C @

Single note composition using the above macro:

 #NOTE 56, 12, 15;
 $

Contemporary

 1"HELLO, WORLD!" $

"TRUTH MACHINE"
A=1
1 A"1"
A[G1]
1"0"
$

"COLLATZ SEQUENCE"
A=25
10 A-1[A&1[A=A*3+1*2] A=A/2 \ G10]
$

References

• Strachey, C., "A General Purpose Macrogenerator" Computer Journal, vol. 8 1965, pp. 225-241
• Grogono, P. "MUSYS: Software for an Electronic Music Studio" Software — Practice and Experience, vol. 3 1973, pp. 369-383. doi:10.1002/spe.4380030410

External resources

• Peter Grogono's EMS page describing MUSYS
• Mouse article in BYTE magazine, July 1979, vol. 4, number 7, which briefly describes MUSYS.
• "A General Purpose Macrogenerator" article (PDF available via link)
• MUSYSim In progress MUSYS simulator project (Python / Nyquist)