 Matthews was an amateur violinist, and during a conversation with his superior, John Pierce at Bell Labs, Pierce posed the idea of synthesizing music through a computer since Matthews had already synthesized speech.Matthews agreed, and beginning in the 1950s wrote a series of programs known as MUSIC.MUSIC consisted of two files—and orchestra file containing data telling the computer how to synthesize sound—and a score file instructing the program what notes to play using the instruments defined in the orchestra file.