Many years ago, Brian Eno popularised the term "generative music" to describe music that is ever-different and changing, and that is created by a system.
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Theory
There are four primary perspectives on Generative Music (Wooller, R. et. al. , 2005)(reproduced with permission):
1. Linguistic/Structural: music composed from analytic theories that are so explicit as to be able to generate structurally coherent material (Loy and Abbott 1985; Cope 1991). This perspective has its roots in the generative grammars of language (Chomsky 1956) and music (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983), which generate material with a recursive tree structure. In Theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of Syntax. Avram Noam Chomsky (noʊm ˈtʃɑmski born December 7 1928 is an American linguist, Philosopher, cognitive scientist, Political Fred Lerdahl (born March 10 1943) is the Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia University Ray Jackendoff (born January 23, 1945) is an American Linguist. In Computer science, a tree is a widely-used Data structure that emulates a Tree structure with a set of linked nodes
2. Interactive/Behavioural: music generated by a system component that ostensibly has no inputs. That is, 'not transformational' (Rowe 1991; Lippe 1997:34; Winkler 1998). Brian Eno's Generative Music 1 is an example of this.
3. Creative/Procedural: music generated by processes that are designed and/or initiated by the composer. Steve Reich's Its gonna rain and Terry Riley's In C are examples of this (Eno 1996). WikipediaWikiProject Composers#Lead section --> Stephen Michael Reich (born October 3 Terry Riley (born June 24 1935) is an American composer associated with the minimalist school
4. Biological/Emergent: non-deterministic music (Biles 2002), or music that cannot be repeated, for example, ordinary wind chimes (Dorin 2001). This perspective comes from the broader generative art movement. Generative art refers to Art that has been generated composed or constructed in an Algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by Computer This revolves around the idea that music, or sounds may be 'generated' by a musician 'farming' parameters within an ecology, such that the ecology will perpetually produce different variation based on the parameters and algorithms used.
Software
Many software programs have been written to create generative music, including:
- Intermorphic's Noatikl 2007-present. Noatikl was launched in 2007 as as a replacement for the no-longer-available Koan.
- SSEYO Koan Pro (1994-2007), used by Brian Eno to create his hybrid album 'Generative Music 1'. Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (born 15 May 1948 commonly known as Brian Eno (ˈiːnoʊ is an English Musician, producer intermorphic acquired the Koan technology in 2008. Noatikl is described by Intermorphic as "The Evolution of Koan".
- Karlheinz Essl's sound environments fLOW (1998-2004)
- SEELEWASCHEN (2004)
- MusiGenesis (2005), a program that evolves music.
- Lauri Gröhn has developed Synesthesia software that generates music (midi file) from any photos in a few seconds.
- The madplayer uses generative techniques to create electronic music, as does LEMu (Live Electronic Music).
- Many algorithmic music projects are also considered to be generative (see algorithmic.net for some of them). Algorithmic composition is the technique of using algorithms to create Music.
Noatikl
Intermorphic's Noatikl is described by Intermorphic as being a "trans-generative" music engine that allows control to come both from a variety of sources:
- purely internal (left to freewheel)
- the user may interact with the engine via a user interface
- from external MIDI input (both to harmonize with incoming note events, or to respond in complex ways to MIDI controller events)
- from internal Lua scripts (which can respond for example to time-of-date or in a complex way according to MIDI input events or events generated within the Noatikl engine).
Other Notes
- Brian Eno, who coined the term 'Generative Music', has used generative techniques on many of his works, starting with Discreet Music (1975) up to and including (according to Sound on Sound Oct 2005) his latest album 'Another Day on Earth'. Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (born 15 May 1948 commonly known as Brian Eno (ˈiːnoʊ is an English Musician, producer Discreet Music (1975 is an album by the British ambient musician Brian Eno. Year 1975 ( MCMLXXV) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. His works, lectures, and interviews on the subject have done much to promote generative music in the avant-garde music community. Avant-garde (avɑ̃gaʁd in French) means "advance guard" or "vanguard Eno used SSEYO's Koan generative music system (created by Pete Cole and Tim Cole of intermorphic), to create his hybrid album Generative Music 1 (published by SSEYO and Opal Arts in April 1996), which is probably his first public use of the term "Generative Music". Koan is a Generative music engine that was created by a company called SSEYO a company founded by Pete Cole and Tim Cole
- Lerdahl and Jackendoff's publication described a generative grammar for homophonic tonal music, based partially on a Schenkerian model. Schenkerian analysis is a method of Musical analysis of tonal music based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker. While originally intended for analysis, significant research into automation of this process in software is being carried out by Keiji Hirata and others.
- In Its gonna rain, overlapping tape loops of the spoken phrase "it's gonna rain" are played at slightly different speeds, generating different patterns through phasing. In the Compositional technique phasing, popularized by composer Steve Reich, the same part (a repetitive phrase is played on two Musical instruments in
See also
References
Biles, A. Algorithmic composition is the technique of using algorithms to create Music. Interactive music also known as nonlinear music or adaptive music, is synonymous with Soundtracks to Interactive media and in particular Koan is a Generative music engine that was created by a company called SSEYO a company founded by Pete Cole and Tim Cole 2002a. GenJam in Transition: from Genetic Jammer to Generative Jammer. In International Conference on Generative Art, Milan, Italy.
Chomsky, N. 1956. Three models for the description of language. IRE Transcripts on Information Theory, 2: 113-124.
Cope, D. 1991. Computers and musical style. Madison, Wis. : A-R Editions.
Dorin, A. 2001. Generative processes and the electronic arts. Organised Sound, 6 (1): 47-53.
Eno, B. 1996. Generative Music. http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/eno1.html (accessed 27 July 2005).
Essl, K. 2002. Generative Music. http://www.essl.at/bibliogr/generative-music.html (accessed 16 August 2006).
Intermorphic Limited History of Noatikl, Koan and SSEYO
Lerdahl, F. and R. Jackendoff. 1982. A generative theory of tonal music. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Lippe, C. 1997. Music for piano and computer: A description. Information Processing Society of Japa SIG Notes, 97 (122): 33-38.
Loy, G. and C. Abbott. 1985. Programming languages for computer music synthesis, performance and composition. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 17 (2): 235-265.
Rowe, R. 1991. Machine Learning and Composing: Making Sense of Music with Cooperating Real-Time Agents. Thesis from Media Lab. Mass. : MIT.
Winkler, T. 1998. Composing Interactive Music. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Wooller, R. , et al. A framework for comparing algorithmic music systems. in Symposium on Generative Arts Practice (GAP). 2005. University of Western Sydney.
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