Historical background[edit]

In 1995 whilst working with SSEYO's Koan software (built by Tim Cole and Pete Cole who later evolved it to Noatikl then Wotja), Brian Eno used the term "generative music" to describe any music that is ever-different and changing, created by a system. The term has since gone on to be used to refer to a wide range of music, from entirely random music mixes created by multiple simultaneous CD playback, through to live rule-based computer composition.


Koan was SSEYO's first real-time music generation system, developed for the Windows platform. Work on Koan was started in 1990, and the software was first released to the public in 1994. In 1995 Brian Eno started working with SSEYO's Koan Pro software, work which led to the 1996 publication of his title 'Generative Music 1 with SSEYO Koan Software'.


Eno's early relationship with SSEYO Koan and Intermorphic co-founder Tim Cole was captured and published in his 1995 diary A Year with Swollen Appendices.

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) Another Day on Earth. His works, lectures, and interviews on the subject[3] have done much to promote generative music in the avant-garde music community. 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.

Brian Eno

Lerdahl and Jackendoff's publication described a generative grammar for homophonic tonal music, based partially on a model. While originally intended for analysis, significant research into automation of this process in software is being carried out by Keiji Hirata and others.

Schenkerian

In It's Gonna Rain, an early work by contemporary composer , overlapping tape loops of the spoken phrase "it's gonna rain" are played at slightly different speeds, generating different patterns through phasing.

Steve Reich

A limited form of generative music was attempted successfully by members of the UK electronic music act ; Delia Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson and Peter Zinovieff, in 1968. However, its use would only be popularized later on.

Unit Delta Plus

 – Music in which some element of the composition is left to chance

Aleatoric music

 – Technique of using algorithms to create music

Algorithmic composition

 – Discrete model studied in computer science

Cellular automaton

 – Art of ringing a set of bells in mathematical patterns

Change ringing

 – Application of computing technology in music

Computer-generated music

 – Art created by a set of rules, often using computers

Generative art

Interactive music

List of music software

 – Integration of programming as part of running program

Live coding

 – Musical dice games used to randomly generate music

Musikalisches Würfelspiel

Artística de Valencia, After The Net, 5 – 29 June 2008, Valencia, Spain: catalogue: Observatori 2008: After The Future, p. 80

Biles, A. 2002a. : from Genetic Jammer to Generative Jammer. In International Conference on Generative Art, Milan, Italy.

GenJam in Transition

Chomsky, N. 1956. . IRE Transcripts on Information Theory, 2: 113-124.

Three models for the description of language

Collins, N. 2008. . Organised Sound, 13(3): 237–248.

The analysis of generative music programs

Cope, D. 1991. . Madison, Wis.: A-R Editions.

Computers and musical style

Dorin, A. 2001. . Organised Sound, 6 (1): 47-53.

Generative processes and the electronic arts

Eno, B. 1996. Generative Music. (accessed 26 February 2009).

http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/eno1.html

Essl, K. 2002. Generative Music. (accessed 22 Mar 2010).

http://www.essl.at/bibliogr/generative-music.html

García, A. et al. 2010. Music Composition Based on Linguistic Approach. , Pachuca, Mexico. pp. 117–128.

9th Mexican International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, MICAI 2010

Intermorphic Limited (accessed 26 February 2009).

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. . Information Processing Society of Japa SIG Notes, 97 (122): 33-38.

Music for piano and computer: A description

Loy, G. and C. Abbott. 1985. Programming languages for computer music synthesis, performance and composition. , 17 (2): 235-265.

ACM Computing Surveys

Nierhaus, G. Algorithmic Composition - Paradigms of Automated Music Generation. Springer 2009.

Rowe, R. 1991. . Thesis from Media Lab. Mass.: MIT.

Machine Learning and Composing: Making Sense of Music with Cooperating Real-Time Agents

Winkler, T. 1998. . Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Composing Interactive Music

Wooller, R., Brown, A. R, et al. A framework for comparing algorithmic music systems. In: Symposium on Generative Arts Practice (GAP). 2005. University of Technology Sydney.