Description
A tabletop digital system developed in 1972 by MIT professors Marvin Minsky and Edward Fredkin, more as an experiment in deterministic sound generation and artificial intelligence than a musical instrument. (At the time, Minsky was moonlighting on the set of 2001 A Space Odyssey, teaching Stanley Kubrick about Artificial Intelligence as he created Hal!) The Muse directly outputs lengthy repeatable sequences of pitched tones when programmed. Eight 40-position slide pots act in lieu of a keyboard to alter binary logic circuits, and this digital signal is passed through a digital to analog (DA) convertor to create a sequence of audible tones, determined by setting the sliders. Four of the sliders control the interval of notes, and the other four control the overall theme. A bar-graph lamp display near the sliders shows the status of the logic gates. Another set of sliders control the volume from the internal speaker, the tempo of the sequence, and the pitch. Additional switches allow you to start the sequence from the beginning, step through it note-by-note, or substitute a rest point in place of the lowest note. The owner’s manual provided slider settings for example tunes, as well as templates where the user could log settings which had resulted in interesting sequences. The Muse is extremely rare – less than 300 are thought to have been sold. Even more rare are the accessories Triadex produced to go along with the Muse, including the AS1 amplifier and external speaker, a Multi-Muse Cable (used to daisy-chain multiple Muses together), and a the LS1 Light Show module, a color organ whose 4 colored lamps blink in time to the signals coming from the Muse. All these accessories shared the Muse’s unique design styling. Very difficult to master, and nearly impossible to get it to play a specific song, the Muse offers nearly endless potential for random music generation. Set the sliders, switch it to automatic mode, and it will produce all sorts of bleeps and bloops. Add the Light Show module to the mix, and it becomes a visual spectacle as well.
