Many exciting pieces are now performed digitally. Chowning's FM algorithms and the advent of fast, inexpensive, digital chips made real-time possible, and equally important, made it affordable. Starting with the Groove program in 1970, my interests have focused on live performance and what a computer can do to aid a performer. I made a controller, the radio-baton, plus a program, the conductor program, to provide new ways for interpreting and performing traditional scores. In addition to contemporary composers, these proved attractive to soloists as a way of playing orchestral accompaniments.
Singers often prefer to play their own accompaniments.
Recently I have added improvisational options which make it easy to write compositional algorithms. These can involve precomposed sequences, random functions, and live performance gestures. We have taught a course in this area to Stanford undergraduates for two years. Primarily I believe it gives them a feeling of complete power to command the computer to do anything it is capable of doing.