bobrocco.com
2023
Bio: Bell Labs Computer Specialist
HELEN SHEWMON THEMEClick the arrow to hear an excerpt of Bob playing the beginning of the guitar solo version.
Do you notice the slight pause between each group of twelve notes?
About the Recording
Bob's Melody Generator
Bob created a computer program that translates a group of letters, like your name, into a melody. His ‘C’ language program takes an English letter character string as input and transposes it into a diatonic musical theme. The first piece using the program was composed in 1988 for Helen Shewmon, secretary to Dr. Max Mathews, for her 35th anniversary at Bell Labs. The program transposed all of the non-musical letters of her name into one of the seven letters of the musical alphabet using the computer’s internal random-number generator as follows:
Input: H E L E N S H E W M O N
Output: A E E E G E A E B F A G
The first 12 notes in the piece exactly match the program’s output melody above. Thematic compositional material was then derived from the output character string. The composition was first played on the Max Mathews Electronic Drum and was also arranged for guitar solo.
Career at Bell Laboratories
Bob Rocco is a retired Member of the Technical Staff (MTS) of Bell Laboratories where he worked as a computer specialist for more than 20 years. He started his full-time employment at Bell Labs as a computer programmer, was promoted to senior programmer, systems analyst, and project leadership positions. It is at Bell Labs that he met Max Mathews in 1984 and became an associate in his Electronic Drum and Pierce Scale musical/acoustical research projects.
During his employment at Bell Labs, Bob received numerous awards and recognitions; the most prestigious being an honorarium from Nobel Prize winner and Bell Labs Vice President Arno Penzias for his solving of a difficult applications programming problem. He also earned a letter of commendation from the Vice President of Computer Technologies Eric Sumner for a computer music presentation to Bell Lab’s President Ian Ross and the executive council. Besides holding a B.S. degree in Computer Science, Bob also is a Masters Certified Oracle Database Administrator. At the time of his retirement, Bob was the database administrator for the flagship lucent.com corporate website.
Copyright 2023 Robert Rocco. All rights reserved.