from http://www.computer.org/tab/cgm/news21.htm Jan 1993

Since the late 60's most of the work in composition at CCRMA has been done in a software
environment which evolved from the Music V program originally developed at Bell Labs. 
The hardware and software has improved over the decades following, and the names of things 
have changed. Ported to a PDP10, Music V became the Mus10 music compiler system and played 
scores composed in Smith's SCORE language.

The compiler was replaced in 1977 with dedicated synthesis hardware in the form of the 
Systems Concepts Digital Synthesizer (built by Peter Samson and known as "the Samson Box"). 
The Samson Box was capable of utilizing many types of synthesis techniques such as additive 
synthesis, frequency modulation, digital filtering and some analysis-based synthesis methods. 
The software for controlling the synthesizer included languages for patching together the 
synthesizer's real time resources, 256 oscillators, 128 modifiers and delay memory. The PLA 
language, by Bill Schottstaedt allowed composers to specify parametric data for the Samson Box 
as well as for other sound processing procedures on the PDP10 mainframe (and its eventual 
replacement, a Foonly F4). On April 3, 1992, the Foonly and Samsonbox were officially retired. 
CCRMA has transitioned to a network of NeXT and PC workstations and PLA exists as Common Music 
(written in Common Lisp by Rick Taube) to create scores by listing parameters and their values, 
or by creating algorithms which can determine any number of parameters' values. Common Music 
scores are synthesized on NeXTSTEP based workstations using CLM (for Common Lisp Music), a 
kast software synthesis package that makes use of Motorola 56001 DSP's. Continuity has been 
maintained over the entire era, for example, scores created on the PDP10 or Samson Box have 
been recomputed on a NeXT, taking advantage of its increased audio precision. To summarize 
all these names for CCRMA's composing environment, the synthesis instrument languages have 
been called Mus10 - Sambox - CLM and the composing language succession has been 
SCORE - PLA - Common Music. 

