Here’s a blast from the past — an algorithmic compositional blast from the past, that is. M is a unique piece of software for “interactive composition.” With patterns, cycles, and conducting options, you can create algorithmically-generated music, adjusting various parameters for sophisticated results rather than sequencing directly. It’s a totally different approach to working, something that’s easier to experience than to describe. M launched way back in 1987 and eventually support Atari, Amiga, Mac, and Windows; it was a big hit in the years afterward. The creators were David Zicarelli (now with Cycling ‘74, and a sort of father to Cycling’s Max/MSP), John Offenhartz, Antony Widoff, and Joel Chadabe. (Check out the whole history.) I saw it for the first time at a summer program at Oberlin and loved it immediately. Now, with a computer stacked full of soft synths and the recurring desire to get out of my head, compositionally, I think I actually have more use for it in 2007.

It’s not very often that vintage software gets update
d with current tech while retaining its original interface, but that’s exactly what Cycling ‘74 has done with M 2.7. Intel compatibility means it can run on your brand-new Mac Pro, but the angular throwback interface will make it look like a Mac II. (Got a good System 7 skin, anyone?) But the real story here is Core MIDI support. It allows you to plug M into your existing soft synths. Imagine M plus Logic’s Sculpture, or combined with a monster Max/MSP patch.

M 2.7 @ Cycling ‘74

It’s great to see someone recognize that it’s not only about the upgrade that’s just around the corner. Virtual Console games are selling by the millions on Nintendo’s Wii. Hopefully creative technology, even in limited form, could be next. I’ll be testing M soon; I’ll let you know how it goes.

PC users/Atari lovers: See details in comments on the freeware Atari version. But what’s this about an emulator? Time to scour eBay for an Atari ST, I think.

It’s pretty stunning to watch Brian Eno, one the major pioneers of our time in terms of thinking about musical form, onstage with Will Wright, one of the major pioneers of our time in terms of thinking about game design. Here’s Brian Eno in conversation with Will Wright, chatting about the kind of generative systems that drive their collaboration in Wright’s upcoming game Spore. There’s plenty of Web coverage of the game itself: here, they go the classic generative model, cellular automata, and talk about how an unbelievably simple set of rules can yield immense complexity. CA was developed decades ago, but as we learn more about the power of DNA, that message seems even more powerful today. As Eno succinctly puts it, making art this way is about “seeds, not forests.”

Generative music is, of course, of great interest to game composition, because it makes the musical score as dynamic and unpredictable as the game itself, rather than simply a background of looping music. Whereas some composers are actually looking to more complex recorded scores, others are coming full circle to music more tightly tied to the game.

It’s great to see Eno and Wright return to the simplest of models as a conversation. I’m eager to learn more about the music specifically being composed — or engineered, depending on how you look at it — for Spore, and hope we can bring you more details closer to the release.

Thanks to Synthtopia for pointing this out; they’ve got additional videos with more coverage of Spore itself:

Will Wright and Brian Eno On Spore [Synthtopia]

Lots of other great stuff has been hitting Synthtopia of late, as well, so do check it out!

In other Eno-mania news, Apple has a profile of Eno as visualist, and his new digital painting project 77 Million Paintings. The model in visualism as in music is generative, working with seeds.

Profiles - Brian Eno [Apple.com]

77 Million Paintings [Official Project Page]

77 Million Paintings Interview [YouTube]

Eno’s background was in art, so it’s nice seeing the fusion of music and visuals — something we’re all about.

Anyone else with some good Eno stuff, Spore or otherwise, send them our way!

The Musini began its life as an award-winning toy. The product description is hilarious:

A perfect gift for rambunctious toddlers, the Musini music box provides a constructive way for children to channel their physical and creative energy. While kids step, jump, turn, and tap, the Musini’s patented MusicSensor detects their every move and translates it into a totally unique musical response, teaching cause and effect. A Style Dial encourages children to explore the five different musical styles, ranging from jazz to classical, and musical variation buttons offer four different interpretations of each musical style.

(Some of us rambunctious toddlers here on CDM require decidedly more expensive toys into which we channel our physical and creative energy.)

Of course, the results are interesting, but not as interesting as they could be, so circuit benders have set about modifying the toys. A couple of weeks ago, we saw chronovalve’s ambient musini bend, alongside a very lovely, post-apocalyptic-looking keyboard. Jonathan Williams write in to share his own circuit-bent musinis. His designs may have inspired other benders’ musini hacks; even if not, he’s gone through several generations and added some powerful features:

Mike aka Chronovalve writes CDM to share two new projects: a circuit-bent keyboard called Debris and the Musini, a children’s toy turned into a surprisingly sophisticated ambient music generator.

Here’s the surprise: just because these are circuit-bent / DIY projects doesn’t have to mean they sound like glitchy chaos. One of the conversations I had with Reed Ghazala, the “father of bending”, was about his disappointment that benders weren’t exploring broader timbral and musical horizons, at least for his taste. Mike definitely gets some interesting sounds out of these. For instance, the keyboard can absolutely rock the glitch:

Debris Glitch

But it can also enter traditional synth lead territory, with some subtle twists:

Debris 1

The Musini enters an entirely different musical dimension with some wild sonic landscapes, all from an aleatoric children’s toy:

Musini Metamorph

More pics and sounds:

Musini
Debris

Nat Jeanneret aka “funnel”, the musician and artist behind the CDM site design, has been busy at work on a new project: creating music my scoring those little spots of gum and dirt found on a train platform. It’s a great example of aleatoric music, not in the best-known sense of “pure” chance but in reflecting the patterns found in the world around the composer.

Nat has made a video, as well, in which you can watch him convert bubble gum-on-platform music to Sibelius digital notation. It’s the ultimate digital music, in a way: the analog (erm, disgusting old bubble gum) is overlaid on a real-world grid (the lines of the platform) and quantized to 5-line staff notation.

Full details from Nat:

Aleatoric Music Composition [onetonnemusic]
Aleatoric Composition… THE MOVIE! [onetonnemusic]

Composers out there, if you’ve ever done anything similar, we’d love to hear about it.

Programming offers incredible possibilities for music creation, and with the free Processing development environment for Mac, Windows, and Linux, even non-programmers can get into the artistic horizons of code. But code doesn’t always think like composers do. That’s why the new sound library jm-Etude looks promising:

New sound library: jm-Etude [Code & form]

jm-Etude for Processing, and the Java library jMusic on which it’s based, allow you to structure your code more musically with notes, phrases, parts, and scores. Combine this with the Sonia synthesis library for Processing (or, for Java development, the corresponding JSyn plug-in), and you have a serious compositional environment. I can also see this as appealing to people coming from the land of Csound and wanting something that lets them code notes and other musically-useful units.

I’d love to see a similar library that helps deal with performance environments, helping structure into scenes and elements — Chris from Pixelsumo was just asking me how you might use Processing in a VJ performance. For live music or visuals, it’d be helpful to have a library that lets you structure what you’re doing over time for performance. Anyone know if there’s something like this already out there (short of coding the thing yourself, which might ultimately be better)?

[Updated:] I missed the major point of this, which is that it lets you use Processing as an interactive MIDI sequencer. (Follow that link for a promising-looking interactive table, built in the “app no one wants to use any more,” Director.)

Brent, CDM’s resident game composer, is back with another look at the world of digital music in gaming. And again, gaming gives us a glimpse of what future digital music could be like — namely, permutable. (That’s a word, isn’t it?) -PK

The level of interactivity in today’s game audio continues to grow and expand. While most of us are used to the experience of a specific theme or piece of music associated with a given level or area in a game (e.g. the level 1-1 “Overworld Theme” from Super Mario Bros.), only recently have game composers been afforded the storage space and system-level-support for music that changes based on the (sometimes unpredictable) actions of the player.

A growing trend on this front is what is known as permutative music. Though certain developers may call it by different names, this type of audio implementation essentially remixes the audio tracks on-the-fly based on the actions of the player. The newest version of Splinter Cell, features a very well implemented system of this nature, with a soundtrack composed by electronic virtuoso Amon Tobin.

(Read more)

I get these kind of requests all the time. "Peter, thanks for the
helpful coverage on the USB MIDI controllers, but when will someone finally release audio hardware I can really use, like a concrete block that plays algorithmic music for 30 years?"

Yes, folks: it's a piece of concrete.
With a DSP chip inside. That can randomly generate algorithmic music
for 30 years (after which, it dies . . . unless it's robot soul goes
insane thinking about its own mortality, a la Blade Runner). Good news
for DIY types, though: the Boston-based DSP collective that created
this is working on a new cheap DSP box anyone can use. Encase it
concrete if you like, or (more useful) use it in your own installation
or performance rig. More on that soon. [Thanks, eyebeam]