This is part history and part just fascinating. If you are interested in the computer's creative role in music then watch and listen to "Live Music by Robots and Humans".

Despite the title this video (below) is about electronic music and some weird and wonderful software and hardware that has been invented to create it.

The downside is that the video is 1 hour 20 minutes long and drags a bit in places -  but this is what the position select bar is all about. Even if you don't have the patience or deep interest in computer generated music to sit through all of it have a quick look at random points in the video - you are sure to find something to amuse you and you will probably have to back track to see if there is more of the same.

The speaker is Eric Singer and the talk is about LEMUR -League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. Some of the early experiments he talks about look very clunky by todays embeded hardware standards. but they look fun and make sure you see the demo of the early music creation software - a visual language if there ever was one.