Welcome to the Composers' Desktop Project!

The Composers' Desktop Project (also known as Composition, Development, Performance) was formed in 1987 by Tom Endrich, Richard Orton, Trevor Wishart and Andrew Bentley, with David Malham (hardware design) and Martin Atkins (system software). The intention was to create an organisation through which composers could work together to bring to their own desktops a broad range of computer music facilities, particularly those relating to sound design and electro-acoustic music composition. The advantages of this plan, besides permanent access to the facilities, include control over the development of the system, and programming tools which enable users to customise it and create new applications.

From the start, CDP has maintained an open policy for sharing expertise among its members. We strongly believe in the importance of practical experience and want to promote the development of software which flows directly from the insights of composers active in the field.

The result in 1994 was a system with an extraordinary range of in-depth sound generating and processing software, used by many educational institutions and major computer music composers. As such it is complementary to many MIDI and hard disk recording systems.

All who have been involved with the evolution of the CDP System welcome you to the Project and hope that the facilities they have helped to make available will enable your musical imagination to discover and explore exciting new musical materials and create soundscapes which realise its fullest potential.

For the most update information about CDP, please visit CDP's official website.