Musicians and composers have long dreamt of computers and mobiles playing music that changes on its own, rather than playing static, pre-determined scores. But to actually pull it off, you need a number of pieces. One solution for putting those pieces together is finally here, with desktop-to-mobile delivery and an interesting combination of a generative engine with synths and effects that can work in real time.

We’ve been following the work of Intermorphic for some time: this team, experienced in generative music (as popularized by the likes of Brian Eno), has been building a portfolio of software for music making using generative and other techniques. At long last, their anticipated Mixtikl V1 suite is here. The idea is to combine a set of complementary tools for making and delivering music on computers and mobiles, with a particular eye toward interactive, generative tools. The components of the suite:

• Partikl, the synth: Modular synth, DLS (DownLoadable Sound) MIDI playback, and effects “network,” Partikl works both on desktops and on mobile devices (currently PocketPC/PDA). There’s even a “particle generator.” Make tones, create modular synths and effects you can modulate live, or play back sample/loop content.
• Noatikl, the generative engine: Here’s the good bit. Based on the evolution of the same Koan system employed by Brian Eno, Noatikl is a scriptable “hyperinstrument” that can generative musical structures. Partikl is designed to work with it, so part of your musical structure can be modulating your synths, effects, and samples. The full Noatikl doesn’t run inside Mixtikl, but a runtime does, so it can play back generative structures instead of limiting you to static MIDI files and the like.
• Static content support: Even the most rigorous advocate of generative music will likely concede that some pre-determined content can be useful. So the suite supports static scores and audio files (OGG, WAV, AU, MIDI, MOD).
• Apps to use them together: Remixer, Performer, and Player let you combine these elements for live use.
• Packs: Tiklpak content  are generative packs that show off what the thing can do.
• Desktop support: Mac, Windows. And having the ability to use plug-ins means authoring should be much easier.
• Mobile support: Windows Mobile at launch (for almost any resolution currently available, even including Windows Mobile smartphones). Coming soon: Symbian, iPhone/iPod touch, and the multi-platform Antix Game Player (have to admit, hadn’t heard of that one).

Mixtikl Download Page [Desktop, Mobile]

Press release

Pricing: US$9.99-29.99 for Mixtikl; Noatikl $79.99+; various bundles and limited-time coupons available – but you can get up and running with quite a lot for around ten bucks

It’s good to hear the iPhone is back on the list after some doubts from Intermorphic earlier this year. (Apple easing up on restrictions may have helped!) The Intermorphic crowd note that:

If you do get a chance to play with it, do try out some of the Noatikl generative items in the Tikpak Cinematic 120d, which is one of two Tiklpaks that comes embedded with Mixtikl. The generative items show up as red in the content list. As some of these also use Partikl to dynamically create the their sounds (they do a lot) and they also use FX, these ones can really slow up your device, as they do consume a fair amount of processing power.

There’s something appealing about being able to take a generative composition with you, whether it’s listening on the go or actually remixing or performing with it. So the mobile delivery thing is really important.

It’s taken some time to develop this, so it’ll likewise take some time for us to spend some time with Mixtikl. Stay tuned – and let us know if there’s anything you’d like us to specifically see.

So, the guitar with the Korg KAOSS Pad KP3 built-in wasn’t enough for you, huh? Here’s an axe with two iPod touch units attached. The sounds that result, with Ableton Live, the Eno/Chilvers app Bloom, and bowed guitar, are quite lovely. That shows some of the power of these apps: playing along with the generative/interactive music app Bloom is a bit like having an intelligent composition to work with. If these devices were more open and allowed easy creation of your own musical toys, you could built generative machines to play along with you. And it also demonstrates how touch and smart devices can extend the performance possibilities of a traditional instrument, in a way a rig of effects pedals and stomboxes – no matter how sophisticated – never could. (Thanks, nostromo!)

My favorite part: because Bloom uses the accelerometer, shaking the guitar clears patterns in Bloom. That demonstrates how a gesture that’s gimmicky on its own could be really useful in a particular performance situation.

Creator Brian William Green has some notes on his creation. And he cautions that this is just a quick, informal jam; it’ll be interesting to see how this evolves as he practices.

This video is a quick demonstration of my guitar with 2 itouch ipods mounted onto the body of the guitar.

The ipod closest to the guitar pick ups is running Itouch Midi’s Matrix app which I’m using to send midi to Ableton Live on my Macbook via wifi.

And the itouch near the bottom is running Bloom designed by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers, Bloom is a generative music application.

Note: in this video bloom is just being run through my mixer when i play live it is run through various patches to alter it a bit.

The reason i shake the guitar is to clear bloom and start a new pattern, each time i shake it, it clears the boards and lets you start again.

Note: this video is just me messing around with a quick live set i through together just for the video its nothing real special but it shows kinda what im doing for my live sets, one thing that im not using in the video that is in my live setup is various Pd(puredata) patches.

More Videos Soon.
Thanks
-Brian Green

Other guitarists using similar rigs? Let us know!

Bloom is a new generative musical application for iPhone and iPod touch, created by Brian Eno and software designer Peter Shilvers. It’s quite simple, but if you’re looking for some soothing musical strains to float out of your mobile Apple device, this is your ticket. At launch, you’re given a choice of either using a pre-determined set of rules, or tapping in your own parameters and patterns. The touch interface lets you use your fingers to add note patterns, which then repeat and mutate. If you make your own composition, you’ll start those patterns from a blank slate, but even if you choose an existing composition, you can tap solos over the top. The taps turn into patterns that transform themselves when the system is “idle,” rather than repeating indefinitely.

The results aren’t terribly deep – everything has a more or less similar ambient vibe, and tapping patterns in feels only barely interactive. It’s tough to predict the results and the patterns generally mutate on their own. The app is clearly geared for casual users, though it’s pretty wonderful for that audience. If you want depth, I’d stay tuned for the launch of RjDj; its generative apps, built in the open-source modular multimedia software Pd, are virtually unlimited in their musical capabilities, and they make use of the iPhone’s mic and sensors. (More on RjDj coming later this week.) See also full-featured generative software on PC/Mac, including the free Nodal, the excellent and deep Intermorphic offerings (from a team that has collaborated with Eno in the past), or even the game soundtrack for EA’s Spore, led by Eno as composer.

But that said, the compositions here are really beautiful, and it’s fantastic to watch the Apple mobile morph from simple playback devices into generative, interactive computers. Any fan of Eno or generative music will definitely want to snap this up for US$3.99.

Bloom @ iTunes App Store

Here’s what the app sounds like:

Bloom generative sound sample 1

Bloom generative sound sample 2

Let us know what you think. Any other similar apps coming out on iTunes?

Aside from being toy-like mini-computers, could mobile devices take on a musical usefulness all their own?

At the Electronic Music Foundation’s 10th Anniversary Symposium in 2004, Morton Subotnik and fellow panelists imagined an iPod that, instead of playing canned music from your music library, would actually generate music for you on the spot. Believe it or not, commercial demand aside, that might soon be reality.

We saw Intermorphic’s fascinating generative music engine noatikl at the end of last year. It’s the “spritual successor” to the Koan generative system used by Brian Eno in 1996. Read up and see the videos here:

noatikl: New Generative Music Engine, So You Can Rock Out Like Eno

They’ve got various videos showing off what the results can be like, including the one at top, which combines noatikl and Apple’s Logic 8 synths. If you’re interested in learning more, Intermorphic has a page with some background on generative music with comments from pioneer Eno:

generative music @ Intermorphic

Enter iPhone, Mobile

Here’s where this all goes mobile. Wonderful mobile music site Palm Sounds notes that Mixtikl will allow on-the-go music production for a variety of platforms. You’ll be able to work on your Mac and Windows PC VST/AU host, but you’ll also be able to support:

• Windows Mobile 5, 6
• iPhone, iPod Touch
• Symbian Series 60 V2/3 smartphone
• Antix Game Player

The basic idea is a music tool that blends generative music tools and playback with access more traditional loops and patterns.

Mobile functions will include:

• Generative music playback and creation alongside loops, MIDI, and modular synths and effects
• Quick mixing with selectable sources/loops and effects, and preset generative players
• Cell-based performance mixers
• Synth sound editing
• Effect and “network” editing
• Packaging for export

Intermorphic’s Peter Cole also tells us that non-commercial licenses for noatikl are automatically being upgraded to commercial-use launch — and price cuts are coming on all the products.

Now, I have heard lots of skepticism about generative music in general, in everything from games to composition to live performance. But I’d remember, too, that this approach to music is really new. Eno’s 1996 iteration was revolutionary at the time, and few have followed. The enabling technologies have only recently fallen into place. And whereas most musical creation systems have plenty of existing precedents from linear analog tape and mixing decks to musical notation, generative music requires new ways of thinking. So I’m very interested to see what happens. And while this didn’t get a demo onstage at WWDC’s iPhone bash today, it could wind up meaning deeper things for music in the future than even iPod.

mixtikl Product Page; product due later this year

Tired of waiting for Spore, the upcoming Will Wright game that will feature organic, generative music by musical legend Brian Eno instead of … looping … the same 8 bars of audio … over and over again? Want to explore your own oblique strategies in music making and create evolving generative compositions? noatikl could be for you.

Co-creator Pete Cole, who evidently found us by googling Eno, wrote us last week with the details:

intermorphic (http://www.intermorphic.com) yesterday launched the noatikl generative music engine.

You can think of noatikl as a "spiritual successor" to the (no-longer available) Koan generative music engine, which of course was used extensively by none other than Brian Eno; who you mentioned a while back in the context of Spore. Brian created his seminal "Generative Music 1" with the Koan system back in 1996.

As you’ll see from the site, noatikl has been created from scratch, is Windows and Mac compatible, and is available in a variety of plug-in variants. There are also quite a few demo and tutorial videos available on both myspace and vimeo.

noatikl Overview

umcorps Videos on Vimeo (tutorials + musical examples)

Pete Cole Videos on Vimeo (still more tutorials + musical examples)

The price tag is set at US$179 (standalone) to $249 (suite) US$99 (standalone non-commercial) to $199 (suite commercial) under a new pricing scheme, with academic pricing available. I have to say, even if you’re not interested in buying a new tool, anyone with a passing interest in the possibilities of generative music will want to spend a little time with the videos — some fascinating ideas in there.

Windows and Mac tutorials (in HD, no less) after the jump. Thanks for the couple of tips I got on this; back from Australia and catching up now!

Previously:

Brian Eno, with Wright on Spore and Generative Systems, Sound, and Paintings

Brian Eno to Create Generative Soundtrack for Spore; Algorithmic Productivity Busting Follows

(I think CDM should issue a "Seeds, Not Forests" t-shirt.)

noatikl generative music – creating your first piece on Mac from Pete Cole on Vimeo.

noatikl generative music – creating your first piece on Windows from Pete Cole on Vimeo.

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!