Generative music

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

This was Eno's big idea through the 90's, well he banged on about it in every interview he did. However it seems even more under the radar now than ambient was in the late 70's and early 80's, yet he was eventually proved (more or less) right about that. As much I'd love to hear a 72 hour version of music for airports, it seems fundamentally wrong in that listeners want the thrill of the familiar.

Does anyone listen to or make generative music just now? Or will it's time really come when the barriers between computers and home entertainment systems are finally eroded?

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 10:23 (twenty-two years ago)

There's definitely some people experimenting with it here and there, one Norwegian composer (I can't remember who at the moment, maybe Geir knows?) set up a thing a few years ago where music got generated out of the sewers, or something like that.
He basically had it set up so you had to go through a particular place to listen to it. And I like that idea; a consistent never-ending ambient piece that goes with a particular location that it's hopefully calibrated to fit with.

Other than that, ehh, it's not something I have much interest in. I do think it can be fun to just do something that ends up with seemingly randomly generated sounds, textures and tones, and then incorporating it into more traditional forms of music. Not a new idea, I know, but something I find myself doing more and more when I play with an amp; trying to incorporate randomness within the structures - randomness that surprises myself and not just listeners (ie not just me going "WOOOHOO RANDOMSCALE AT ODD ROOTAM!"

Don't you love it when people come in and ramble around and ruin your whole thread?

― Øystein H-O (Øystein H-O), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 10:38 (twenty-two years ago)

generative grammar? but i hardly know her!

― geeta (geeta), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:11 (twenty-two years ago)

(sorry)

― geeta (geeta), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:11 (twenty-two years ago)

am happy that geeta seems to be posting more.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Some of what Markus Popp was at least proposing to do with his do-it-yourself-Oval software qualifies as generative music, I think, though I'm not sure it ever actually came out.

I wrote a piece about this years ago, back when Eno was banging on about it. Beyond Eno (who had some similar software package in the works) and Popp, I spent some time talking about the "shuffle" function on CD players, and how a composer like David Shea actually went so far as to suggest in his liner notes that you could, and should, make your own randomized version of his album. Anyway, it was all very interesting, but yeah, nothing's really come of it.

― Lee G (Lee G), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 14:52 (twenty-two years ago)

There's a lot of generative music out there. Markus Popp is probably the best-known purveyor. I've seen OvalProcess. It's pretty simple in that it's primarily loop-based with an effects bank (two events don't instigate a third unrelated event, they just sound cool) -- but his concept is clear. It goes like this: The composition is the system that makes the music; the actual sounds you hear on a particular Oval CD are just a read-only snapshot of one possible outcome. So that's a cool idea -- give listeners the means to create a new performance within certain parameters every day. Yoko Ono had to marry John Lennon to get that. Yet for whatever reason Popp kept ultimately kept the software to himself.

Anyway, wake up -- there's generative music everywhere. TV commercials have random cycling sound events. Videogames use variables of game time, character health, and location to change the key and timbre of the score. I almost assume that every digital based recording studio has a copy of Max just to plug in a few MIDI instruments and see what happens. There's a simpler thing called Koan that I think is used to deliver generative music through web sites.

And there's Dark Noerd the Beholder doing it with black metal.

― Ian Christe (Ian Christe), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Confield by Autechre was composed entirely through generative algorithms.

― Disco Nihilist (mjt), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 23:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Ian Christe you made me laugh very loudly. Thank you.

― gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 29 October 2003 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I have and continue to use Koan to make drum lines with.

― Xii (Xii), Thursday, 30 October 2003 03:53 (twenty-two years ago)

the flipside to all of the digital generative stuff is what labels like lucky kitchen do. i don't know if it's a disservice to call them field recordings but that's the closest frame of reference i know. and a snapshot of a particular unique moment in time is indeed what they are. if there are such things as unique moments in time, that is. here's a nice definition of generative art: "Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is then set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art." eno's work in this area is one tiny piece of a bigger whole. i've read some rather disparaging comments about his understanding of technology, but that's beside the point because understanding the implications and uses of generativity is more important than technical prowess.

― disco stu (disco stu), Thursday, 30 October 2003 14:50 (twenty-two years ago)

six years pass...

So this weekend, to follow this up, my Propellerhead Reason loving pal and I decided to see exactly how much we could fuck things up by plugging Note and CV gates into spiders and redrums and subtractor LFOs, pretty much at random - it was a glorious spaghetti junction of virtual synthesis I tell youse. The sound that came out was like Confield in a blender. Very rarely had so much fun making peculiar blasts of unexpected noise.

― village idiot (dog latin), Monday, 17 May 2010 14:18 (fifteen years ago)

eight months pass...

Not generative music, but I'm really enjoying this:

http://www.irvinebrown.com/?p=538

― toby, Tuesday, 18 January 2011 23:41 (fifteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.