Gregory Taylor

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Happy holidays! It's a time for celebration, and for quiet contemplation (if that's possible where you are). I'd like to do a little contemplating in public this time out on a subject near and dear to many of us.

Generative musics (and the ways they're constructed) remain a favorite topic in Maxland. Within the boundaries of this forum, we tend to focus most often on 

 one might generate material - one need only do 

a search on the Forum using the word generative

The Max community has a wealth of talented users who think deeply and subtly about this question - Max user/musicians such as 

, create software that is a touchstone for many of us. Similarly, 

Christopher Dobrian's Algorithmic Composition blog

 is a treasure trove of concepts and patching for anyone serious about algorithmic work and design, and the occasional Autechre patch (

purloined, reverse-engineered, or otherwise

But I'd like to take this discussion somewhere else, if I may. Generative art is about generating and organizing variety, and for the "generative" source of this article, I can point to the emails that showed up in my inbox after 

my review of David Grubbs' Records Ruin the Landscape

 - notes from old and new friends writing comment on the idea that recordings freeze a given experience in the same way that 

What's had me thinking ever since has to do with the options we have for creating ways of delivering generative content that extend beyond isolated experiences that can be frozen in time. It's often a conversation that turns immediately to a specific set of solutions:

For this article, I hope you won't mind my looking a bit farther afield. I finished David Grubbs' book thinking about what precise 

 a more open form of a musical object might take above and beyond the stuff on my Walkman/iPod/Smart watch. This article will provide you with some opportunities for holiday meditations on subjects you can take with you into the new year.

As long as we’re meditating on how things could be different, one way to do that might be to consider the shape that recent novel approaches have taken. Having done that, we might ask ourselves “What current technologies are out there that I’m not thinking in terms of generative function or content delivery?”

Now that we live in the era of the iPod where random playback is a part of our lives, it may be difficult to imagine a time when one solution to the fixed recorded object was based on the technology of playback itself. CD and Minidisc players included the ability for random selection of tracks or the playback equivalent of the Max 

The players’ appearance gave rise to a new version of the recorded object (or perhaps performance is the better word) it became the result of the ordering the material as it's played. Examples of the approach include 

 (Autechre joined by Russell Haswell), John Schott’s 

Shuffle Play: Elegies for the Recording Angel

 - Mikel Rouse’s work for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In each case, it's the 

 of the material that makes the experience unique.

You could consider that approach as somewhat similar to another way of working - one that is often the source for fixed documents of a generative piece: random playback using multiple sources – 

Charles Curtis’ Ultra White Violet Light/Sleep

, which used the same materials on random play distributed among tape machines. You can find a demonstration of one of the million ways the piece could turn out here:

So, what current technologies might be repurposed to deliver generative content? Multiple external speakers/tablets? Hacked Amazon Echo/Google Home devices? RFID trackers as parameter generators? A gaggle composed of your friends' smartphones? Game engines with audio support? This is one of those situations where you can imagine someone at a consumer electronics show having their moment of Satori - of looking at something everyone else has right in front of them and seeing something new. 

Another source for contemplation has to do with the object that instantiates "the unique experience." While that's often been 

an opportunity for market speculators drawn by the rarity of something

, There are other interesting objects out there to consider. They can be inexpensive approaches to production. 

The band Icarus produced a large number of unique CDs

 based on the material for their album as a Compact Disc, with each purchaser getting a unique copy. Similarly Marsen Jules' 

 provides the unique instance loaded on a USB drive. The cost of media for such outings makes those approaches appealing.

 app was an early generative program whose popularity never really flagged (because 

. Brad is still very much in the game, and he's taken a unique approach to providing generative content that has much more to do with generative gaming (a la 

) than app design: His astounding books - 

 - compose and generate their music on the fly as you read them.

My final lovely nominee for your perusal in terms of content delivery is 

Spyros Polychronopoulos' Live Electronic Music

 sound object, whose photograph opens this article. It's has just been reissued in limited numbers. The object is simplicity itself: plug it in, give it some power, and it'll play one of four compositions, each playback of which is different to the one before it. My copy of it is back at home (I've got an edition one copy), but happily you can find a recording of one of the squillion possible realizations here:

There's one more place I'd like to go - one that perhaps will be obvious to Max users: Authoring systems for generative music. Of course, Max is our favorite example (since we can create our own), but I've also been thinking recently about what other authoring environments are out there, and what encounters with them might have to teach us. As with the humble step sequencer, visual arrangements and workflow are, themselves, generators of insight.

I have previously enthused at length about Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers' Scape application

 as a way to create and experience generative music. Although the original article goes back several years, I would change nothing I said then, and I still use it today. It is an exemplary thing worth your attention in terms of mystery, discoverability, and plain old enjoyment.

Scape
Available now for iPad
http://www.generativemusic.com

Scape makes music that thinks for itself. From Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers, creators of Bloom, Scape is a new form of album which offers users deep access to its musical elements. These can be endlessly recombined to behave intelligently: reacting to each other, changing mood together, making new sonic spaces.

Can machines create original music? Scape is our answer to that question: it employs some of the sounds, processes and compositional rules that we have been using for many years and applies them in fresh combinations, to create new music. Scape makes music that thinks for itself.

- Brian Eno, Peter Chilvers

Brian Eno
Synthesiser, found sound, bells, bass guitar, strategies, images, art direction

Peter Chilvers
Synthesiser, chapman stick, structures, probability networks, additional images, software design

Includes 15 original scapes
Scapes can be saved into a gallery and added to a playlist 
Plays in background of other apps (excluding iPad 1)
Generates random scapes
Scapes can be shared by email
Supports AirPlay and Retina display

Headphones or external speakers recommended

PLEASE NOTE: Scape starts with a reduced set of elements, backgrounds and moods. The remainder are introduced gradually, to give the user time become familiar with them. All of the elements shown in the video are included.

℗ & ©  Opal Ltd. 2012
Images  © Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers, Opal Ltd. 2012

Scape by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers - Available for iPad

But it's not alone, by any means. In fact, the means by which Mr. Eno first ventured into the field of generative music is the origin of another authoring environment: 

. As with any good lifeform, Koan has evolved and regenerated and migrated to its current form: 

. If you knew the original, I think you'll find its current form intriguing. If you've never encountered the program, I think you'll find its way of conceptualizing generative content to be well worth your time.

Finally, the folks at Monash University in Australia have developed an interesting graphic environment for generative work: 

. It's fascinating in the way that any good, intuitive graphic interface always it. It sends you elsewhere, or directs your attention to making things rather than to the interface itself. There's a lot to think about here.

Organizing the things I've presented here involves a set of anxieties. The minute I start to say anything about the subject, I begin to run the risks of either being a lousy editor (because my list of examples is incomplete) or a poor curator (because I don't show the proper care for someone's hard work who I've neglected to mention).

Those twin anxieties go back a long way - they're even encoded in the origins of the words "edit" and "curate" themselves. To quote from Ana Faherty's blog entry on this subject in 

In Roman times editors were the producers of gladiatorial games, impresarios (often the Emperor himself) who staged spectacles to wow audiences while keeping a close eye on costs. Editors held the power to decree whether gladiators lived or died. 

Curators, on the other hand, cared for, organised and recorded artworks, finances and even disadvantaged people. 

As every good editor knows, definitions of words evolve through common usage, yet there is still a distinction between ‘editing’ (from the Latin 

: to bring forth), which the OED positions as a controlling and content-focused production task, and ‘curating’ (from 

: to care for), which is concerned with selecting, organising and keeping.

I'm hoping you - as readers - can help me out. The most important bit of this posting involves what you might add as readers. I've decided to avoid the urge to be taxonomically thorough, and hope that those of you who are similarly inclined will chime in with your own examples of the things I'll mention.

Tell us all about some cool stuff in the comments. We can all use some more interesting forms of generative art in our lives, and it'd be nice to have a place for all those future students doing generative music projects to land when they fire up their search engines.... 

Generative musics (and the ways they're constructed) remain a favorite topic in Maxland. Within the boundaries of this forum, we tend to focus most often on how one might generate material - one need only do a search on the Forum using the word generative to get a sense of that.

The Max community has a wealth of talented users who think deeply and subtly about this question - Max user/musicians such as Karlheinz Essl, Leafcutter John, and Agostino di Scipio, create software that is a touchstone for many of us. Similarly, Christopher Dobrian's  Algorithmic Composition blog is a treasure trove of concepts and patching for anyone serious about algorithmic work and design, and the occasional Autechre patch (purloined, reverse-engineered, or otherwise) excites Max users of all ages. 

But I'd like to take this discussion somewhere else, if I may. Generative art is about generating and organizing variety, and for the "generative" source of this article, I can point to the emails that showed up in my inbox after my review of David Grubbs' Records Ruin the Landscape - notes from old and new friends writing comment on the idea that recordings freeze a given experience in the same way that writing freezes language. 

Web-based interfaces such as Macchina, Wolfram Tones, or Patatap all come to mind here, to name a few. I'm sure you can think of lots of examples. Perhaps you've created some yourself.

The generative composition as an App. In addition to the examples within the Max/MSP community I've mentioned, there was the wonderful Buddha Machine app that put a half-dozen Buddha Machines on your iPad (and we're waiting for the next iPad update!). Peter Chilvers and Brian Eno are, of course, well known for their generative applications Bloom, Trope, and - most recently - Reflection (by the way - the Reflection app is regularly updated as "seasonal" versions that really do change the output). In addition, there are some interesting Android apps out there such as NodeBeat and Orbits.

For this article, I hope you won't mind my looking a bit farther afield. I finished David Grubbs' book thinking about what precise forms a more open form of a musical object might take above and beyond the stuff on my Walkman/iPod/Smart watch. This article will provide you with some opportunities for holiday meditations on subjects you can take with you into the new year.

Now that we live in the era of the iPod where random playback is a part of our lives, it may be difficult to imagine a time when one solution to the fixed recorded object was based on the technology of playback itself. CD and Minidisc players included the ability for random selection of tracks or the playback equivalent of the Max urn object - shuffle play mode.

The players’ appearance gave rise to a new version of the recorded object (or perhaps performance is the better word) it became the result of the ordering the material as it's played. Examples of the approach include the Mini Disc release from Gescom (Autechre joined by Russell Haswell), John Schott’s Shuffle Play: Elegies for the Recording Angel, or International Cloud Atlas - Mikel Rouse’s work for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In each case, it's the ordering of the material that makes the experience unique. 

You could consider that approach as somewhat similar to another way of working -  one that is often the source for fixed documents of a generative piece: random playback using multiple sources – Charles Curtis’ Ultra White Violet Light/Sleep (which is spread over 4 LP sides) or Brian Eno’s Music for White Cube, which used the same materials on random play distributed among tape machines. You can find a demonstration of one of the million ways the piece could turn out here:

So, what current technologies might be repurposed to deliver generative content? Multiple external speakers/tablets? Hacked Amazon Echo/Google Home devices? RFID trackers as parameter generators? A gaggle composed of your friends' smartphones? Game engines with audio support? This is one of those situations where you can imagine someone at a consumer electronics show having their moment of Satori - of looking at something everyone else has right in front of them and seeing something new. You, perhaps.

Another source for contemplation has to do with the object that instantiates "the unique experience." While that's often been an opportunity for market speculators drawn by the rarity of something, There are other interesting objects out there to consider. They can be inexpensive approaches to production. The band Icarus produced a large number of unique CDs based on the material for their album as a Compact Disc, with each purchaser getting a unique copy. Similarly Marsen Jules' Shadows in Time provides the unique instance loaded on a USB drive. The cost of media for such outings makes those approaches appealing. 

Brad Garton's Looching app was an early generative program whose popularity never really flagged (because everyone loves the Looch) - its current incarnation is as a Macintosh widget. Brad is still very much in the game, and he's taken a unique approach to providing generative content that has much more to do with generative gaming (a la Spore) than app design: His astounding books - My Music Book and My Book of Dreams - compose and generate their music on the fly as you read them. 

My final lovely nominee for your perusal in terms of content delivery is Spyros Polychronopoulos' Live Electronic Music sound object, whose photograph opens this article. It's has just been reissued in limited numbers. The object is simplicity itself: plug it in, give it some power, and it'll play one of four compositions, each playback of which is different to the one before it. My copy of it is back at home (I've got an edition one copy), but happily you can find a recording of one of the squillion possible realizations here:

I have previously enthused at length about Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers' Scape application as a way to create and experience generative music. Although the original article goes back several years, I would change nothing I said then, and I still use it today. It is an exemplary thing worth your attention in terms of mystery, discoverability, and plain old enjoyment.

But it's not alone, by any means. In fact, the means by which Mr. Eno first ventured into the field of generative music is the origin of another authoring environment: SSEYO's Koan software. As with any good lifeform, Koan has evolved and regenerated and migrated to its current form: Intermorphic's Wotja. If you knew the original, I think you'll find its current form intriguing. If you've never encountered the program, I think you'll find its way of conceptualizing generative content to be well worth your time.

Finally, the folks at Monash University in Australia have developed an interesting graphic environment for generative work: Nodal. It's fascinating in the way that any good, intuitive graphic interface always it. It sends you elsewhere, or directs your attention to making things rather than to the interface itself. There's a lot to think about here.

Organizing the things I've presented here involves a set of anxieties. The minute I start to say anything about the subject, I begin to run the risks of either being a lousy editor (because my list of examples is incomplete) or a poor curator (because I don't show the proper care for someone's hard work who I've neglected to mention).

Those twin anxieties go back a long way - they're even encoded in the origins of the words "edit" and "curate" themselves. To quote from Ana Faherty's blog entry on this subject in The Bookseller:

In Roman times editors were the producers of gladiatorial games, impresarios (often the Emperor himself) who staged spectacles to wow audiences while keeping a close eye on costs. Editors held the power to decree whether gladiators lived or died.   

Curators, on the other hand, cared for, organised and recorded artworks, finances and even disadvantaged people.    

As every good editor knows, definitions of words evolve through common usage, yet there is still a distinction between ‘editing’ (from the Latin edere: to bring forth), which the OED positions as a controlling and content-focused production task, and ‘curating’ (from curare: to care for), which is concerned with selecting, organising and keeping.

Tell us all about some cool stuff in the comments. We can all use some more interesting forms of generative art in our lives, and it'd be nice to have a place for all those future students doing generative music projects to land when they fire up their search engines.... 


meditationongenerative-feature.png

The holidays are a time for contemplation. This year, I'm thinking about generative music - the form it takes or might take, and how it's made. Got any examples of your own to share?

a-meditation-on-generative-musics-«and-their-forms»

Batuhan Bozkurt's Laconicism is also a good example. It's based on SuperCollider. 

Batuhan Bozkurt's Laconicism is also a good example. It's based on SuperCollider. 
You can download a copy at http://bit.ly/74cB8l 

An excellent article with tons of pointers I will follow up. Thanks!

An excellent article with tons of pointers I will follow up.  Thanks!

Awesome article with much to explore. In my own experiments I've been using natural phenomena to seed a system that generates sound. One example ( 

 ) uses high-speed video capture of snow blowing through the field of view of the camera, and simple blob detection to create unpredictable generative soundscapes.

Awesome article with much to explore. In my own experiments I've been using natural phenomena to seed a system that generates sound. One example ( https://vimeo.com/177192683 ) uses high-speed video capture of snow blowing through the field of view of the camera, and simple blob detection to create unpredictable generative soundscapes.

What puzzles me about most generative music done to date is that more rhythmical styles are avoided. I have made some humble attempts on algorithmical sequencing on M4L, and still feel this approach is underdeveloped. Especially when it comes to taking generative music to a more general public, more accustomed to rhythmical music. I have been dreaming about a software that lets musicians transform their compositions into generative and compile them into a new format for a generative music app that anyone can use, a sort of generative music Spotify, with something like ".gem" instead of .mp3's. This could be a revolutionary new paradigm in music distribution. If anyone is interested in this approach, I'd be happy to collaborate. 

We can also consider the new trend of "machine learning" as another element that can enrich the generative music context. Maybe something like a generative system that learns from it's own compositions and pursues a style. I guess this has already been looked into. 

In conclusion, what I would love to see in GM: more rhythm, more audience, and some AI stuff.

What puzzles me about most generative music done to date is that more rhythmical styles are avoided. I have made some humble attempts on algorithmical sequencing on M4L, and still feel this approach is underdeveloped. Especially when it comes to taking generative music to a more general public, more accustomed to rhythmical music. I have been dreaming about a software that lets musicians transform their compositions into generative and compile them into a new format for a generative music app that anyone can use, a sort of generative music Spotify, with something like ".gem" instead of .mp3's. This could be a revolutionary new paradigm in music distribution. If anyone is interested in this approach, I'd be happy to collaborate. 

We can also consider the new trend of "machine learning" as another element that can enrich the generative music context. Maybe something like a generative system that learns from it's own compositions and pursues a style. I guess this has already been looked into. 

In conclusion, what I would love to see in GM: more rhythm, more audience, and some AI stuff. 

Thats a good example, although I was thinking more of a simpler approach, throwing a track's stems into a software that does all the job, just introducing some simple variables. Then rendering a generative music format file to be opened in a user app.

Also, check out the Kadenze course on Generative Art and Computational Creativity: 

https://www.kadenze.com/courses/generative-art-and-computational-creativity/info

 and proceedings of Musical Metacreation Workshops: 

http://musicalmetacreation.org/proceedings/

Also, check out the Kadenze course on Generative Art and Computational Creativity: https://www.kadenze.com/courses/generative-art-and-computational-creativity/info  and proceedings of Musical Metacreation Workshops: http://musicalmetacreation.org/proceedings/ 

Hi Gregory, can I point you towards a couple of things of mine? 

First, nwdlbots (pronounced "noodlebots"), a suite of Generative M4L devices I released in 2011 (

). These haven't been maintained for a while but I think they still work in Live. 

http://www.sundaydance.co.uk/audio-spray-gun/

), a program written in SuperCollider, which generates and spatially distributes large numbers of audio events from a single sound file for use in immersive multichannel composition.

Hi Gregory, can I point you towards a couple of things of mine? 

First,  nwdlbots (pronounced "noodlebots"), a suite of Generative M4L devices I released in 2011 (http://www.sundaydance.co.uk/nwdlbots/). These haven't been maintained for a while but I think they still work in Live. 

Second, Audio Spray Gun (http://www.sundaydance.co.uk/audio-spray-gun/), a program written in SuperCollider, which generates and spatially distributes large numbers of audio events from a single sound file for use in immersive multichannel composition.

Thanks


Dear Gregory, thanks for the great article.

Dear all, at Cashmere Radio we are having a show for generative music and installation based sound works called Chronopolis for which we are always looking for contributions to be aired live over long durations. Have a look at our archive and please get in touch if you want to propose a work.

Dear Gregory, thanks for the great article.

Dear all, at Cashmere Radio we are having a show for generative music and installation based sound works called Chronopolis for which we are always looking for contributions to be aired live over long durations. Have a look at our archive and please get in touch if you want to propose a work.

cashmereradio.com/chronopolis 
chronopolis[at]cashmereradio.com 




A more recent example of using shuffle play to produce unique performances is Eluvium's 

A more recent example of using shuffle play to produce unique performances is Eluvium's Shuffle Drones.

One more astoundingly cool generative app worth mentioning:

Since I wrote this article, I've been wandering around with the sense that there was a really amazing example of a generative app I'd picked up a few years back that I neglected to mention. I could see the size of the little box it came in and the curvy thing on its cover, remembered that its creator was an Italian guy, and even that I'd picked it up about 5 or 6 years ago. It was making me crazy.

Last night, while working on a playlist for my weekly radio program of experimental and new music, I was going through a box I hadn't opened since my return to the United States last January, and there it was. Yeah, it's as cool as I remembered it. Domenico Sciajno's 

This short video tutorial shows the basic steps to use the software of Sonic Shuffle The App release. This should be watched as the first one among the video uploaded.
All detail on http://www.sonicshuffle.net

Sonic Shuffle The App Release Basic VideoTutorial

 One more astoundingly cool generative app worth mentioning:

Since I wrote this article, I've been wandering around with the sense that there was a really amazing example of a generative app I'd picked up a few years back that I neglected to mention. I could see the size of the little box it came in and the curvy thing on its cover, remembered that its creator was an Italian guy, and even that I'd picked it up about 5 or 6 years ago. It was making me crazy.

Last night, while working on a playlist for my weekly radio program of experimental and new music, I was going through a box I hadn't opened since my return to the United States last January, and there it was. Yeah, it's as cool as I remembered it. Domenico Sciajno's Sonic Shuffle.

A Meditation on Generative Musics (And Their Forms)