Obituary written and picture provided by Robert D. Morris (Eastman School of Music) and published by the Society for Music Theory.

Wayne Slawson, computer music pioneer, composer, and music theorist, died at 89 on August 6, 2022.

Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1932, Wayne Slawson was educated at the University of Michigan (BA in mathematics, 1955 and MA in music composition, advisor Ross Lee Finney, 1959) and Harvard University (PhD in psychoacoustics, advisor S. S. Stevens, 1965).

While pursuing his graduate education, Slawson was a computer programmer and systems analyst with the U.S. Air Force, the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif. (1955–57), and the Mitre Corp. in Bedford, Mass. (1959–62). At Mitre he specialized in speech synthesis. He enjoyed post-doctoral fellowships at MIT and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

Slawson taught composition, music theory, and psychoacoustics at Yale University (1967–72), the University of Pittsburgh (1972–86; Professor from 1984), and UC Davis (1986–2001), where he directed the Computer and Electronic Music Studio. He was a member of the Society for Music Theory from its inception in 1977. After retiring from academia, Slawson moved to Oregon where he established and served as President of Yank Gulch Music and continued to compose.

Slawson was among the major figures in the 1960s writing software to allow digital computers to generate musical sound. His unique approach to computer sound synthesis was to view speech as the interaction of acoustic energy sources weakly coupled to a filter system. This became the key conceptual basis for remarkable progress over the last half century in automatic speech understanding and text-to-speech systems. Starting in the 1960s at MIT, Slawson applied the source-filter model and “terminal analog” digital speech synthesizers that follow from the model to the invention of a powerful way of making music in which timbre is as prominent and intricately controllable as pitch. He developed the music and speech synthesis programs MUSE (1961) and SYNTAL (1969–), published numerous articles on music theory and psychoacoustics, and delivered papers and talks at many international conferences. His monograph, Sound Color (University of California Press, 1985), which systematized timbre for analytical and compositional purposes, was awarded the first Outstanding Publication Award of the Society for Music Theory in 1986. Slawson reconfigured his sound color theory in an important later article, “Color-Class and Pitch-Class Isomorphisms: Composition and Phenomenology,” published in Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2005).

As a composer, Slawson produced works for traditional ensembles such as Motions for Orchestra (1973), Interpolation of Dance for String Quartet (1992) and Match for Orchestra (circa 2000). In 1970, his first computer music composition, Wishful Thinking About Winter (1969), was included on a Decca LP record called “The Voice of the Computer” featuring pioneering computer music compositions (DL 710180). His computer music compositions include Colors (1981), Quatrains Miniatures I-V (1985), Death, Love, and the Maiden (1975), poor flesh and trees, poor stars and stones (1977) and Mixed Doubles (2010). Other works are scored for computer sound with acoustic instruments and the voice.

He is survived by his wife, Jannalee, and two children, Sean Alfred and Devon Elizabeth.