Ancient Web: Malcolm Dale Sequenced a Classical Music Library in NoteWorthy

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Malcolm Dale wanted other people to hear the classical music he loved. His solution was not a streaming playlist: he personally entered the notes into computer software and put the files on his homepage.

Visit Malcolm Dale's music site.

The front page offers indexes for Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Scott Joplin, Scriabin, and many other composers. Dale says he has sequenced hundreds of works over the years with NoteWorthy Composer. Visitors can download its files and, with suitable software, watch the score play rather than only listening.

The technical notes are distinctly early-web. The page describes NoteWorthy Player, a Winamp plugin, Sound Blaster recording tools, and conversion to WAV and MP3. It apologizes to Macintosh users because the music software did not support their systems. A guestbook link sits among the music indexes, with a note that an earlier one had been overrun by spam.

A life told alongside its files

Dale's autobiography dates his first homepage to February 24, 1997, and the present site to March 6, 2002. Born in London in 1939, he writes about learning piano as a child, later working in finance, retiring to Belize, and eventually returning to England.

He bought a Commodore 64 in 1987 and taught himself BASIC. The autobiography recalls publishing a sound-effects program in Lodestar magazine and later hearing those effects in a game. His interest in making computers produce sound predates the website by years.

He also records being among the first few Internet subscribers in Belize in 1995, according to his own recollection. That autobiographical claim is worth attributing rather than treating as an independently verified subscriber ranking.

The site's files reflect the peculiar freedoms of an early amateur music archive. Dale invites people to change tempo and study the notes, but asks them not to distribute altered arrangements under his name. Newer video links appear on the homepage, yet the original software-oriented instructions remain.

This is a personal library built through patient transcription, not a commercial catalog. Its outdated playback advice is part of the story of how the scores traveled.

Browse the composer indexes and read Dale's account of his computing years.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.