Be a Composer

Machines to play music have long been accepted, but now there is a machine to compose music--of a sort. Called the Compos-A-Tune, it is a cinch to operate for anyone with elementary knowledge of musical notation.

The Compos-A-Tune ($3) is an 18 in. by 7 in. cardboard rectangle with 16 twirlable dials arranged in two rows. On the upper eight dials the operator sets any rhythm scheme desired (from countless possible combinations) for the first eight bars of a tune. By twirling the bottom eight dials, and following the directions on them, he then discovers a suitable harmonic progression for the eight bars. Next, by consulting a table on the Compos-A-Tune, he learns what melodic notes harmonize with the chord progression, and can lay out a melody in the rhythm shown on the upper dials. And so on, for the whole 16, 24 or 32 bars.

1,000 Songs. Great popular songs have some distinction of melody, harmony or rhythm. Most popular songs do not-- they follow formulas ceaselessly repeated in Tin Pan Alley. So efficiently does the Compos-A-Tune present the Tin Pan Alley formulas that several professional songwriters are already using it as a labor-saving device.

The Compos-A-Tune was invented by Louis Ruben, a round-faced, bespectacled citizen of Bayonne, N.J. A disciple of the late Joseph Schillinger, Manhattan musicologist who believed symphonies might someday be manufactured by machinery, Ruben based his gadget on an analysis of more than 1,000 popular tunes.

An oldtime movie pianist, Ruben studied composition at New York University, today teaches twelve hours a day, partly at Bayonne's Technical High School.

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