“Daisy Bell” - Max Matthews version

by lawrence

Marc Battier gave a fantastic lecture on the history of electronic music the day before yesterday, as one of the master classes held at the conference. Besides Onde Martinot, Theatrophone, Hammond Organ and other awe-inspiring novelties of the past 100+ years, he played the lovely little tune Daisy Bell (better known as Daisy, daisy), as realized by Max Matthews on an IBM 704 in 1961. After the lecture Prof. Battier kindly made a copy of the song for us and we played it in our hotel for four to five times. It had a magical, mesmerizing effect on us, kept repeating itself in our mind. Later it turned out it had the same effect on another audience of the lecture: the Shanghai-based, Seattle-origined game designer and sound artist Ben Houge (who plays with the NOIShanghai gang quite a lot.)

So I’ve decided to share the song with you.




3 Comments »

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  1. The Bell Labs version of Daisy Bell (realized by Max Mathews) had an impact on the science fiction novel 2001 (and its famous movie adaptation by Stanley Kubrick). see:
    daisy bell

    -Eric

    Comment by Eric Lyon — October 28, 2006 #

  2. Thanks Eric, there’s also an entry of the song on Wikipedia:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bell

    Comment by lawrence — October 28, 2006 #

  3. The song was composed in 1892 and still resonates nicely today. You can find the lyrics and an hilarious music arrangement on:
    http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/daisy.htm

    Marc

    By the way, Lawrence, thanks for you kind words.

    Comment by Marc Battier — October 30, 2006 #

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