Free MP3: 1961 record of computer speaking and singing

Remixers, start your engines. On a blog dedicated mostly to 50's pop music, this wonderful post about a collector who found a "synthesized speech" flexi record from 1961 in a junk shop. On this MP3 copy of that record, you'll hear a computer reciting Shakespeare and singing "A Bicycle Built for Two". Link to "Hal's Father," on Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anyplace Else. (Thanks, Andrew Tonkin)

Reader comment: Coop says,

That recording is in fact, the direct influence on HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick researched space travel and computers for years during the extensive pre-production on 2001. He was given this same recording by Bell Labs, and was inspired to recreate the singing computer's performance as Dave disconnects HAL 9000's higher functions. Not sure where I got this info- it's either from the big Kubrick bio, or the documentary that came out a few years ago. Wikipedia claims that it was Arthur C. Clarke's idea.

Reader comment: Yann Seznec says,

Similar to your "1961 record of computer speaking and singing" post – Electronic musician Deltasleep found a crazy old RCA Mark II Demonstration record and has posted the mp3s on his blog. The RCA Mark II was a massive synthesizer at Columbia University in the late 50's used by people like Milton Babbitt…the wikipedia entry has more info.

This record talks about how synthesizers will change the music world, has some hilariously bad renditions of pop songs, and even attempts some computer speech. Link

Reader comment: David New Abernathy says,

ibm's interactive speech demo also contains samples of non-english speech synthesis from ibm…

Reader comment: Donald Ankney says,

The "Bicycle built for Two" recording is actually a fairly seminal work is the development of electronic music — it was originally done at Bell Labs by Max Matthews, who has been characterized as the father of computer music. The full version actually goes through several verses and includes accompaniment. It's available on CD as part of a great computer music retrospective: Link