He plays improvised duets tonight with the computer musician Joel Ryan.
It was written by Max Mathews, a pioneering computer musician who is one of Mr. Rubin's idols, and John Chambers, Mr. Hansen's laboratory mentor.
So are you a D.J. or musician, or even a computer musician?I actually think of what I do more as creating electronic music, not being a D.J., because it is all created on my computer; it's also very mathematical.
Rich Panciera, a laptop musician known as Lloop, started the weekly party two years ago with Mr. Matters and another friend, Daniel Smith, a computer musician known as Newclueless who is also the bar manager at Openair.
Unlike many computer musicians, he also knows how to put on a show: last time he came to town, he was joined by a D.J. and a drummer.
Although the 48K Spectrum's audio hardware was not as capable as chips in other popular 8-bit home computers of the era, computer musicians David Whittaker and Tim Follin produced notable multi-channel music for the machine.
Since electronic musical instruments may produce sound without human interaction, there is debate in the modern music community as to whether or not computer musicians may be considered instrumentalists.
"I don't feel I can recommend the book to nonexperts because a nonexpert won't be able to tease out what's really known from what's speculated," said Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist, musician and virtual reality pioneer.
There's no cellist, but a clutter of samplers, keyboards and a computer, and musicians who wear blank expressions and lopsided hats.
David Fiedler, who developed Homerecording.com, a Web site for the amateur computer-using musician, said that just a few hundred dollars can buy entry-level editing software that can be used to create professional-sounding music when used with a Pentium-class PC or Power Macintosh running at a speed of at least 200 megahertz.
Executives, chefs, computer engineers, musicians, filmmakers, athletes, business owners - these are just a few of the individuals who have already stepped up to be mentors to the residents of Sanctuary Palm Springs.
