Music By Programmers to raise funds for Bletchley Park

An charity album, looking to raise money for Bletchley Park, is to launch next month under an interesting selling point: as the title proclaims, it's entirely made up of Music By Programmers.

The brainchild of Jason Gorman, founder of Codemanship and patron of the Bletchley Park Trust, the album aims to generate much-needed funds to help boost educational programmes at the historical facility which played such a critical role in World War II. Despite investment from Bletchley Council and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, corporate fundraisers and even earlier efforts by Gorman himself, the Trust remains short of the funds it needs to take care of one of the most important facilities in military and computing history.

In particular, it remains difficult for the Trust - which has turned Bletchley Park, once the government's top-secret code-cracking facility, into a museum and event venue - to spare money from keeping the antiquated buildings, many of which were designed in World War II only to last a few short years, standing to running educational programmes that could help remind children of the importance of the facility in world history as well as teach them computer science and programming skills in what is possibly the world's most apposite surroundings.

'Music By Programmers unites three of my greatest passions: music, programming and Bletchley Park,' Gorman explains of his pet project. 'I'm very keen to see a programming club run at The National Museum of Computing and to support parent-child maths workshops at Bletchley Park, and hope to raise enough money to give these projects a much-needed boost.

'The album's a tribute to our computing heritage, evoking a classic era of electronica at the dawn of the home computing boom, epitomised by pioneers like Kraftwerk, Jean Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream. It's all done using software,' Gorman explains, 'but it has that warm, punchy analog feel - like it was recorded to tape circa 1980. That's down to the work of our amazing mastering engineer at Nagasaki Sound.'

Having asked musically-minded programmers to participate back in November, Gorman was pleased to find a wealth of talent willing to take part: as well as Gorman himself, coders Peter Camfield, Brian Hogan, Yuriy O'Donnel, Lance Walton, and Chris Whitworth have all contributed tracks to the Music By Programmers album. 'Chris, Yuriy, Peter, Brian and Lance are all very accomplished software developers, and, as it turns out, talented musicians. I hope this helps to dispel the myth that computer programmers aren't creative,' adds Gorman.

The project has a target of £10,000, which - if raised - will help fund educational programmes at Bletchley Park as well as push Gorman into doing additional entries in what he envisions as a series of albums celebrating the creativity of programmers around the world. 'If we reach our target, we'll do more albums. It would be fantastic if we could provide long-term funding for these projects.'

The album, which can be seen in detail on the official website, is due to be released on the 29th of April, while a short preview is reproduced below for your auditory enjoyment.