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Generating More of My Favorite Aphex Twin Track
- prepend 8y agoThanks for writing this and spending the time to break down and explain how you did it. I’m not the biggest apex twin fan, but I’ve followed him for a few decades and always liked his visual and audio tricks mixed into his music. I feel like he would enjoy the idea of an infinite track and hope he responds somehow. Are there any file formats that allow generative music so I can download this and play in a non-internet connected situation?
- joombaga 8y agohttps://github.com/generative-music https://github.com/generative-music
- alexbainter 8y agogenerative.fm is a progressive web app, so it _should_ work offline with the caveat that you'll need to play a piece once online before it works offline. I'm working on getting this communicated through the site but just haven't gotten around to it yet.
- ronjouch 8y agoCool. Awesome work, thanks for sharing :)
- haywirez 8y agoFor musicians and devs, it's a good hint that Markov chains are "good enough" for most interesting music applications, ML/AI doesn't typically yield better results. Happy to see this on the front page!
- mturmon 8y agoI don't disagree with this observation, but I wanted to mention a counterpoint. Eno's "Music for Airports" famously uses a system of multiple tape loops that produce sequences of different periods. As you listen, you can hear phrases that occur nearly together and then later, well-separated in time, as the periods of these loops go in and out of phase: "One of the notes repeats every 23 1/2 seconds. It is in fact a long loop running around a series of tubular aluminum chairs in Conny Plank's studio. The next lowest loop repeats every 25 7/8 seconds or something like that. The third one every 29 15/16 seconds or something. What I mean is they all repeat in cycles that are called incommensurable — they are not likely to come back into sync again." This interaction of periods will have long memory. (If the tape lengths are L and L+d, for small d, then the repeat time could easily be as long as L*(L/d), and even longer if d does not divide L evenly.) Thus, it is very different from what you get with a Markov chain.
- twic 8y agoThere was an interview with Eno in Wired in 1995 [1] that i still think about sometimes. Amongst other things, he talks about lifting himself to the next meta-level of composition, where he doesn't write music, he writes rules for a box which makes music: Q: If I could give you a black box that could do anything, what would you have it do? A: I would love to have a box onto which I could offload choice making. A thing that makes choices about its outputs, and says to itself, This is a good output, reinforce that, or replay it, or feed it back in. I would love to have this machine stand for me. I could program this box to be my particular taste and interest in things. Q: Why do you want to do that? You have you. A: Yes, I have me. But I want to be able to sell systems for making my music as well as selling pieces of music. In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of "their" works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box. Or you could buy a Brian Eno box. So then I would need to put in this box a device that represents my taste for choosing pieces. [1] https://www.wired.com/1995/05/eno-2/ https://www.wired.com/1995/05/eno-2/
- pcf 8y ago
- droobles 8y agoI feel like the Markov chain could also apply go higher level song formula, with probability weights for choruses, verses, bridges, breakdowns, solos, etc. I prefer to just write a bunch of riffs and see where they grow organically, but it seems the chain would be a great tool to piece some of those ideas together or give an indicator of where they could go when a creative block is hit.
- haywirez 8y agoCoincidentally working on this right now...
- droobles 8y agoLet me know how that goes! I know as a songwriter it'd be a great tool to have on hand.
- haywirez 8y agoWhat you describe is exactly what I'm building - https://songsling.io https://songsling.io Didn't want to explicitly promote it here in the thread, but I'm building it to serve as a general music-content engine for artists (also for my own music, let's be honest) that will let you upload composition parts and the player will put them together on the fly. It already has interactivity built in where you can serve a different version of a track based on changing inputs you connect from your Internet presence etc. Plus, you can DJ with it, it supports smoothly changing playback speeds. It needs to happen.
- bjs250 8y agoJust wanted to say that this looks super dope. Love the aesthetic as well.
- fwip 8y agoOne use-case that immediately jumped to mind for an API plugin is integration with popular games for game streamers to use. Something that detects that you're in the middle of a gunfight vs just chilling in the lobby, and selects/modifies the music appropriately. Some video games do this automatically with their in-game music, but not all, and many streamers prefer using other music to avoid it getting stale.
- cauthon 8y ago> it's a good hint that Markov chains are "good enough" for most interesting music applications, ML/AI doesn't typically yield better results Are Markov chains not considered ML/AI? I would consider them to be a standard part of the field
- ssalazar 8y agoHm, it works well for this particular song/the genre of generative music but it easily hits limits with many other types of music people might want to work with. More advanced ML/AI techniques are needed to reason about sound in a semantic/latent space, which a stock Markov model will not do.
- n_sonic 8y agoThis is excellent. Thank you so much for sharing (and it's certainly a track that I've also wished was longer!) I'd be interested to see if this approach can be implemented within a DAW? This would allow the notes to be played and then treated with FX, EQ and mastering (or maybe just some sound design to get it sounding even closer to the original)? At a push, one could run the output of the browser through the DAW I suppose :)
- llamataboot 8y agoSure - even the built in midi effects are enough to do a lot of generative stuff in Ableton, and when you get into Max the sky is pretty much the limit. But, you could pretty much feed any source of generated midi into a DAW in real time in multiple channels and then have effects on different channels, etc.
- fb03 8y agoTrue! Also, if you are not able to afford Max/MSP, you can do basically the same stuff (although with a clunkier UI) with Puredata, which is a live coding 'graphical language' setup just like Max . In fact it is (or was idk) developed by the same author, Miller Puckette. On Windows, you can use a package like loopMidi to create a virtual midi port which you can use to output the live generated midi data to any daw.
- alexbainter 8y agoSimilar to what another commenter mentioned, I've done some experiments creating a virtual MIDI port from my code where I push all the notes to. A DAW can then read from this like any other MIDI device, as if it's just a MIDI keyboard that someone is playing. Another approach is to generate a MIDI file of some specified length and load that in the DAW, which is nice as it doesn't need to be generated and recorded in real time.
- whatok 8y agoI haven't read through the article but people have been doing generative tracks in Reaktor for years
- Graham24 8y ago"Selected Ambient Works 85-92" is a quality product.
- LeonM 8y agoProbably my favorite album for programming and other work that require concentration. I still haven't encountered anything like it. I wish there was more.
- pimeys 8y agoYou should give a listen to the early Autechre or Speedy J. Or anything Warp put out in the 90s.
- whatok 8y agoYes, if you're listening to it just as background music, early Warp catalog would work.
- fredoliveira 8y agoHighly, highly, highly recommend Autechre's Incunabula, for people who are into Selected Ambient Works.
- tiben_ 8y agoWorth to mention Boards of Canada and B12 from the Warp catalog as well. Warp has been my go-to music label since early 2000's.
- Graham24 8y agoLFO are also top draw stuff
- companyhen 8y agoCheck out the artist "Actress"
- ct0 8y ago
- Sendotsh 8y agoAs an Aphex Twin fan and someone very interested in procedurally generated music, this is absolutely brilliant.
- jxdxbx 8y agoThis is very cool. My personal favorite Aphex track is Donkey Rhubarb if you're feeling ambitious.
- abrugsch 8y agoOh wow... an endless generation of D.R. would send you straight to the asylum! as much as I love the bonkers-ness of Donkey Rhubarb, it's existing length is quite enough for one sitting! <EVIL> Come to daddy on the other hand... </EVIL>
- bloopernova 8y agoOne day, someone will feed the Come to Daddy video into a machine learning cluster somewhere and turn it into a 12 hour video that could give Charlie Brooker nightmares.
- jugg1es 8y agoI really love Aphex's piano tracks. So intimate that you can hear the pedal shifting in the background.
- whatok 8y agoPretty sure most of those tracks are not actually playable by a single person and that they're all programmed.
- egypturnash 8y agoEver since druqs Aphex Twin’s albums have contained both fast-paced techno, and quiet little solo piano pieces that sound quite well within the range of what one human can play.
- icelancer 8y agoMany of the pieces are playable, like Avril 14th. There are a number of people [0] playing it on YouTube and I've been able to knock out a rendition as well. [0]: My favorite - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97FBWB4vv3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97FBWB4vv3s
- whatok 8y agoThat's pretty good but I don't think the higher octave stuff near the end is spot on. This is not playable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uhTwxqE4Co https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uhTwxqE4Co
- NateEag 8y agoI've used my nose to hit individual notes in the middle of the keyboard while using my hands at the extreme ends. I didn't listen carefully to the whole track, but I think you could handle what I did hear that way. Not certain that would work here, just thought I'd point out that there are options beyond your fingers for pushing keys. J. S. Bach is reputed to have held a stick in his mouth to have an additional note on tap - much more practical and playable than my stupid nose trick. If you used a forked stick or a crafted tool you could easily get more than one note, for that matter. http://www.storycompositions.com/2008/07/rare-stories-about-johann-sebastian.html http://www.storycompositions.com/2008/07/rare-stories-about-... (see section "His Music Is Terrible") (I've also used my face to move modwheels while holding dense chords with both hands, but that's not really relevant to piano technique.)
- post_break 8y agoJust pop it into paul stretch and convert it into an hour long masterpiece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1saQ7KLbDUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1saQ7KLbDUY
- fb03 8y agoPaulStretch is amazing! I recommend it to everyone trying to meddle with music, specially ambient/drone. http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/ http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/
- pimeys 8y agoSeems to go more to the direction what Autechre is doing nowadays. I'd recommend to have a listen to the NTS Sessions if you feel adventurous...
- didymospl 8y agoI'm glad you mentioned them. Autechre produced my favourite hacking background music. I agree, people interested in the generative music should definitely give NTS Sessions a listen. But for the newcomers I'd suggest to start with their early IDM albums(Incunabula, Amber) as NTS Sessions may sound too "glitchy".
- tiben_ 8y agoNTS has become my favorite radio. A great place to discover original music.
- pimeys 8y agoI think nobody else goes where they are going right now. Very forward looking and absolutely amazing listening when you "get it". Elseq, NTS Sessions and now these 40+ hours of live archives released. There is an algorithm that just does things to sound. Sometimes it's just noise that turns into the most beautiful thing in the world.
- spiralganglion 8y agoAutechre are my Phish. Their live shows are these kaleidoscopic tours through the sounds (but not songs) of their various albums, recognizable only in passing, in fragments. Their albums are each distinct, but immediately recognizable. Most people can't stomach their music, but those who can swear by it. They aren't afraid to stretch out and take an hour+ for a single song.
- lukasb 8y ago"Autechre are my Phish." Haha, so accurate. I don't usually play Autechre when my roommates are home.
- seszett 8y agoAlthough I like the result, I find the track less soothing without the birds in the background. There's probably a way to generate those as well though, I suppose.
- alexbainter 8y agoAgreed. I considered adding birds to it but I've found if I play this track in the morning and open my window so I can hear actual birds it's a nice experience.
- bonniemuffin 8y agoI'm listening at 7AM and can confirm it mixes well with the real-life birds outside.
- ch 8y agoSadly these office windows that surround me don't open up, and so I'm left to listen to your awesome work paired with the hum of AC blowers and fluorescent light ballast.
- posterboy 8y agoHa, talk about analog!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tmahle 8y agoSecond tab: https://www.birdsong.fm/ https://www.birdsong.fm/
- Pt_ 8y agoWent on youtube and found a "10 hour" bird and forest noises video, works pretty well
- haasted 8y agoGreat article. Is an extended edition of aisatsana available for download anywhere, or is it only available through generative.fm?
- ars 8y agoHow would that work? The idea is it never ends, so how do you download it? It creates a new song each time.
- haasted 8y agoWell, I would be willing to settle for a mix of 1-2 hours. :)
- ryankrage77 8y agoYou can use audacity to record audio coming out of your computer - just change "MME" to "Windows WASAPI" next to the input/output device settings. Then, play audio from generative.fm and record it for 1-2 hours. You can export to MP3 or WAV when done. I did something similar (but with OBS) in this video where I remixed music from the game Mirror's Edge Catalyst using Sonic Pi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ8dD5Bz3_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ8dD5Bz3_E Personally, I like the generative aspect.
- cheez 8y agogenerative.fm is my goto when I need to focus.
- octosphere 8y agohttps://brain.fm https://brain.fm is cool too
- cheez 8y agoVery cool, thanks.
- StacyC 8y agoThis is great - thank you
- Uptrenda 8y agoIt's a beautiful piece and you've done it justice OP. Just wanted to say that.
- bbarn 8y agoHuh. Was bracing for something like "come to daddy" when I hit play. Didn't realize Aphex Twin did anything else.
- avisser 8y agoYou may have heard this behind Kanye, but it's another beautiful piano piece from Richard D James. Avril 14th from Drukqs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBFXJw7n-fU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBFXJw7n-fU
- pimeys 8y agoHe's basically the father of modern claustrophobic ambient with his Selected Ambient Works pt2. A very special thing to fall asleep and wake up while it's still playing. Diverged from Brian Eno's more warm and happy tunes to something darker.
- bbarn 8y agoYeah, it's great stuff so far. I wish I'd known that years ago. Only thing that ever got air play was the other side.
- pimeys 8y agoAnd Come to Daddy was a joke against the current mainstream, that was The Prodigy in those days. Although most of his stuff has been some kind of a joke always, even though its usually brilliant stuff.
- whatok 8y agoAgreed on the ambient classification but I always think of him as much more than that as far as influence goes. He's basically had an influence on a huge portion of electronic and non-electronic music over the past few decades.
- kurtisc 8y agoMentally I have a third group for his music, in addition to the two you mentioned, which is full of fast paced melodic music like 'xtal' that doesn't have any of the harsh beats of his music like Come to Daddy.
- xitrium 8y agoHow do you feel about Alberto Balsam? :)
- fgkramer 8y agoI'd actually pay for it.
- chaseha 8y agoYes. My favorite Aphex Twin track. Relatedly, would strongly recommend the Booka Shade DJ-Kicks album - Alberto Balsam is one of the tracks they selected https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onLPjryBtns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onLPjryBtns
- conqueso 8y agoAlberto has a much more 'traditional' song structure, with a specific melody/harmonies, and well defined sections. I feel like this Markov Chain process is best suited for more loosely structured ambient tracks. That said, I'd be curious to see the results!
- fb03 8y agoIf you guys enjoy generative music, you should try Sunvox. The author has created a js library which you can use to play .sunvox files in it, it is pretty nice too. http://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/jsplay/ http://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/jsplay/ try 'machine 005'. I've been using it for coding lately.
- IggleSniggle 8y agoSunvox has a js lib now?!?!? YAAAAS
- fb03 8y agoYeah! Webassembly blob and you use JS to operate it.
- theon144 8y agoNice! Simple, but works out super nicely :) Even the occasional odd note doesn't seem too out of place, since the phrases are short and "self-contained". I also enjoyed the rest of the pieces on generative.fm, they all have a specific "character" which is quite rare. Nice work!
- am17an 8y agoI'd love to see what Richard has to say about this.
- lostgame 8y agoI can't speak for him, but personally if I was him I'd say 'finally! I've only had these algorithms printed on my records for ~10-20 years' But, realistically, that'd be like in the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy when they said 'but the notice was in Alpha Centauri the whole time! How did you not know?'
- GorgeRonde 8y ago> Aphex Twin (aka Richard James) is known for creating original, complex sounds whenever he can, but his next creation might just take the cake. He tells Groove that he hired a programmer to develop music software based on mutation. Once you give the app an audio sample, it automatically generates six variants on that and asks you to pick your favorite before going on to create more variations -- think of it as natural selection for sweet beats. The software still "needs to be tweeked," and there's no mention of a public launch, but the early output reportedly sounds "totally awesome." Don't be shocked if one of James' post-Syro albums uses this software to create some truly one-of-a-kind tunes. Source: https://www.engadget.com/2014/12/29/aphex-twin-mutation-music-software/ https://www.engadget.com/2014/12/29/aphex-twin-mutation-musi...
- octosphere 8y agoI always think a bit of drum and bass will start playing at any moment listening to this[0]. Aphex Twin's music is so random at times [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_MRe3JwFc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_MRe3JwFc8
- tmahle 8y agoPairs well with https://www.birdsong.fm/ https://www.birdsong.fm/ :D
- ronjouch 8y agoNot generative, but of interest if you like that: http://musicforprogramming.net/ http://musicforprogramming.net/
- glitcher 8y agoOn a side note, saw a nice write-up celebrating the recent 25th anniversary of Selected Ambient Works Volume II: https://www.residentadvisor.net/reviews/23648 https://www.residentadvisor.net/reviews/23648 I feel like that album has a lot of potential for generative experiments. Admittedly, the album has an over-arching tone of eeriness throughout, which isn't something I want to listen to while I work most days. Maybe it would be inspiring to game developers working in the horror genre :)
- lostgame 8y agoActually, speaking of games with Aphex Twin's music, I'm not sure how many folks here recall the Dreamcast classic 'Rez' - a synesthesic, psychedelic rail-shooter which actually featured a track of his, under his legal name 'Richard D. James'. If you guys haven't played it, seriously give it a shot. I believe there is a re-released version on XBOX and PC, though I can't speak to the quality of the ports, as I still play my Dreamcast almost daily. ;)
- DanBC 8y agoRez is brilliant and I remember my dreamcast fondly. This page seems to say that his music wasn't used in the released version. https://www.unseen64.net/2008/04/10/k-project-rez-prototype/ https://www.unseen64.net/2008/04/10/k-project-rez-prototype/
- lostgame 8y agoOkay, that seems to directly contradict my actual memory of the game! I'm absolutely going to have to confirm that. I distinctly remember reading 'Richard D. James', and recognizing the name, as I was a massive fan of 'Drukqz'. Strange how memory affects us. EDIT: And whom lucky enough to own one does not remember the Dreamcast fondly? ;) Crazy Taxi, Quake III, Skies of Arcadia, Ecco, THPS2 - I'd argue the ratio of quality software to shit software was literally almost 1:1, compared to, for instance, the PS2, where you might get 1 great game for every 10.
- 8y ago
- failrate 8y agoSonic PI is an excellent programming tool that lets you do this sort of thong with relative ease.
- empath75 8y agoNow do "Flutter" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZFmZ0gZNZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZFmZ0gZNZI
- ozzyman700 8y agoWhat is a good way to go about working with a new JS library? I only have used Python, Java, and C#. All the tutorials I find on tone.js just include the js code but not information on how to link the library. I would like to play around but getting the dev environment has stumped me.
- SonicSoul 8y agothere are many code playground sites[0] that could make the process less painful for you. essentially you will need to reference the library. you can do it locally, or reference the publicly available version (most libraries have a CDN hosted version). you could also google for the playground site + library, because there may already be a playground setup (a project with a reference to the library already set) for that library somewhere. i.e. [0] https://www.sitepoint.com/7-code-playgrounds/ https://www.sitepoint.com/7-code-playgrounds/
- ozzyman700 8y agoHow do I tell what language to use with this package? From what I can tell it uses react. I have tried node, angular, and react but this installation page confounds me [0]. as far as I understand, I have been using either npm init, ng init, or create-react-app to initialize the directory for an example project. Then I do npm install tone inside of the directory I created. I have found this [1] playground for tone but it does not elucidate how the library should be or is referenced. I'd like to work with generative music but the amount I must know and choose between in a js project always seems to freeze me at the project init phase. In the process of editing this comment I have finally gotten tone.js to work. Here are the steps i followed: npm install create-react-app create-react-app tone-test cd tone-test npm install tone add "import Tone from '../node_modules/tone'" to the top of App.js this step is what I was messing up previously i believe then I just throw tone commands at the bottom of App.js and they play on pageload, this is exactly what I wanted for now. [0] https://github.com/Tonejs/Tone.js/wiki/Installation https://github.com/Tonejs/Tone.js/wiki/Installation [1] https://codepen.io/loderunnr/pen/AXoAko https://codepen.io/loderunnr/pen/AXoAko
- NelsonMinar 8y agoGenerative music comes full circle. This side of Aphex Twin is more or less directly inspired by Brian Eno's Music for Aiports. Which itself comes out of Eno's generative music experiments.
- Mediterraneo10 8y agoAre you sure it was so insprired? Early IDM artists have sometimes admitted never hearing their forebears (Stockhausen, Steve Reich, etc.); they just reached similar concerns independently by noodling with electronics.
- gexaha 8y agoAphex Twin actually listened to Stockhausen (and vice versa): http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2010/10/15/karlheinz-stockhausens-electronic-music-tips-for-aphex-twin-plastikman-others/ http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2010/10/15/karlheinz-stock... and they probably met https://www.reddit.com/r/aphextwin/comments/8vyrbf/aphex_twin_having_a_chat_with_composer_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aphextwin/comments/8vyrbf/aphex_twi...
- Mediterraneo10 8y agoRichard D. James only heard Stockhausen for the first time after the press had been claiming his early works were influenced by Stockhausen. It turns out they weren't.
- NelsonMinar 8y agoI don't think it's possible to make electronic music and not be influenced by Stockhausen. If not directly, then indirectly through diffusion.
- Mediterraneo10 8y agoBy the 1980s most Stockhausen recordings were out of print (as Stockhausen had bought the rights back from Deutsche Grammophon), and Stockhausen was no longer traveling widely to promote his works and he had become rather reclusive as he focused on writing the LICHT operas. So, there was limited opportunity to hear his work and his influence on electronic musicians of that decade is overstated. The advent of drum machines and then PCs that, as people discovered, could be modified to produce unusual sounds is really what sparked electronic experimentation for most producers of that generation.
- runjake 8y agoAs an aside, if you like the track discussed in the article, check out Brian Eno's ambient work [1]. This track is a very obvious homage to Eno (and that's great). Coincidentally, Eno and Richard James are both into generative music and I have little doubt they'll be taking a peek at this article. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TSJbT_NWUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TSJbT_NWUY
- microcolonel 8y agoSomething about the sound of a neglected piano. Detuned, buzzing; it's played as is.
- lostgame 8y agoActually, Aphex Twin and John Cage are both famous for using a technique called 'prepared piano', in which the artist either intentionally uses or intentionally destroys a piano, e.g. by shoving objects into the strings within the body to create an intentionally detuned or broken sound. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_piano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_piano
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- WorldMaker 8y agoTerry Adams (of NRBQ fame) also has a fascinating prepared piano album, if you want to explore other works. http://www.nrbq.com/store/cd-Andromeda.html http://www.nrbq.com/store/cd-Andromeda.html
- vonseel 8y agoHas this guy never heard of a bar or measure? Reading through the first section where he describes the song as sections of 16 beats makes me cringe, and this is coming from someone admittedly horrible with music theory. Edit: I was turned off by his constant usage of the word “beats”, not phrase.
- Sander_Marechal 8y agoActually, a phrase is a common term in music theory.
- spiralganglion 8y agoPhrase is actually the appropriate term. A bar would be 4 beats (for this song, which is in 4/4). The main phrase of the melody is 4 bars long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrase_(music) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrase_(music)
- vonseel 8y agoGood point. I miswrote the original comment, anyways, I meant beats. I thought a bar is 4 beats, a measure is 4 bars (in 4/4)? Going to have to look this up but is measure == phrase == section? Or I guess, a section can be arbitrary number of bars depending on song structure.
- conqueso 8y agobar == measure
- spiralganglion 8y agoThere's a fair amount of looseness in how these terms are used, in practice, depending on the context. 4/4 means 4 beats per bar, and we'll use a quarter note to represent a beat when writing notation. Another example would be 7/8, which is 7 beats per bar, and we'll use an eighth note for the beat when writing notation. Looking at music in terms of bars or measures only really matters when creating traditional western sheet music notation. If we're writing computer code, or playing by ear, or looking at other kinds of music notation, those terms like "bar" and "measure" become less meaningful, and other terms become more useful or appropriate for describing the structure of the music.
- Fricken 8y agoThere's a nice website with a clean UI called 'Music for programming', put together by a guy who curates playlists designed to compliment anyone who wants to buckle down and do deep focus creative work for a while. I've been through each of his 53 playlists several times. 'Asiatsana' is one track in one playlist, but the music overall is very much in keeping with the mood and tone of Asiatsana. https://musicforprogramming.net/?fortyfive https://musicforprogramming.net/?fortyfive
- spiralganglion 8y agoThe curator of Music For Programming [0] (which is fantastic, yes!) also put together the very silly collection of mixes called Businessfunk [1], which are also great coding music. And if you try Businessfunk and decide you have the stomach for it, I recommend following up with the Komputer Cast mixes by Com Truise. [0] https://musicforprogramming.net https://musicforprogramming.net [1] http://datassette.net/businessfunk/ http://datassette.net/businessfunk/ [2] http://comtruise.com/kc/ http://comtruise.com/kc/
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y agoThanks for this. I listen to a lot of Com Truise on Spotify, but had no idea about the Komputer Cast stuff!
- Already__Taken 8y agoThat is linked to from music for programming as "Enterprise mode" lol.
- aasasd 8y agoDatashat also has a mix for the Near Mint web radio program which is essentially Businessfunk No. 4: https://mixcloud.com/Resonance/near-mint-8th-march-2016-datashat-business-funk-special/ https://mixcloud.com/Resonance/near-mint-8th-march-2016-data... Notably, Businessfunk mixes are made of ‘library music,’ i.e. stock musical clipart. Gotta say, I've lately heard a bunch of rather good music from libraries, e.g. the entire soundtrack of ‘IASIP’ (though that one is from “production music” libraries, i.e. more specialized for film, television and the like).
- spiralganglion 8y agoGenerative.fm was shared here last week, spawning a number of interesting discussions. If you enjoy the comments here, I suggest checking out that thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19397817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19397817
- yaw 8y agoThere are a number of languages / environments to help with the creation of generative music under the umbrella term 'live coding' - the community also tries to keep the performance aspects of music intact. Lots of great starting points at: https://github.com/toplap/awesome-livecoding https://github.com/toplap/awesome-livecoding
- logotype 8y agoFor the last 11 years I’ve been listening to autechre exclusively. Maybe that’s weird, but it’s all the sounds I need :)
- richard_todd 8y agoHow did this come about? At some point you realized you were listening to mostly Autechre, and made a conscious decision to cut everything else out? (I’m listening to LP5 now, somehow it has always been my favorite)
- logotype 8y agoyes, exactly!
- jnty 8y agoThis is seriously impressive and very pleasant to listen to.
- xtagon 8y agoReminds me of the Infinite Jukebox: http://infinitejukebox.playlistmachinery.com/ http://infinitejukebox.playlistmachinery.com/
- ahofmann 8y agoOr this (with aisatsana selected): https://eternal.abimon.org/jukebox_go.html?id=3ESsjKqrj3M79I8sSZieK3 https://eternal.abimon.org/jukebox_go.html?id=3ESsjKqrj3M79I...
- mruts 8y agoI always liked Burial for programming.
- spacemadness 8y agoIn knowing the original track very well, I find this version fascinating but also frustrating to listen to. It really emphasizes for me the importance of well thought out note placement and timing and the connection throughout, especially in minimalist pieces. This might sound pompous, but it's like the original seeks to tell a story, but this version is like pulling words and phrases out of a hat; the emotional payoff doesn't exist for me. I hope that's not discouraging in any way, as I think this type of experimentation should be celebrated and the writeup is excellent. I'm only speaking of what effect this has on me tied to this particular piece of music.
- alexbainter 8y agoI know what you mean and I don't find it discouraging at all. Your analogy is perfect. The way the original piece evolves and builds on its phrases over time is very noticeably lacking in the generative version. In my version, any emotional buildup from one phrase to the next can only happen in short spurts at best, and it happens completely by accident. Of course, if I was putting on music that I wanted to really focus on and enjoy, the original would always be my choice. For me, the appeal of an endless version was that I could turn the music into ignorable ambience for my environment. Since we're making analogies, to me it's a bit like seeing a painting you like and saying "Gosh I like that color," then painting your walls that color. It can't compare to the painting but it might remind you of it.
- afro88 8y agoCame here to say this. The generative version has no story, so the emotional aspect is quite watered down, even if the general mood persists. Funnily enough, that is probably perfect for the use case of this kind of thing: background music. Given that the way the phrases evolve, and also repeat, is what tells the story, maybe a second layer of markov chain driving the phrase choices would help?
- budgi4 8y agoThe story can only come from understanding the piece. The understanding requires a deeper knowledge. Interesting that it lacks 'emotional intelligence' - is that something which can also be learnt?
- bartcobain 8y agoIs there a plan for an iOS app anytime soon?
- bartcobain 8y agoReminds me of this Bandcamp user makes some really cool Sci-Fi ambient loops, this one is a Blade Runner ambient loop: https://cheesynirvosa.bandcamp.com/track/blade-runner-ambient-deckards-apartment-sound-also-in-the-movie-alien https://cheesynirvosa.bandcamp.com/track/blade-runner-ambien... I think something like this would be awesome in generative.
- Jaepa 8y agoDoom from 2016 had this really cool feature in it where the music was procedurally adaptive based on the context of the game. When you were getting into a battle the music would mutate and become a lot more aggressive. Small fights would be different from big hairy fights. Ending a fight on low health would be different from leaving it unscathed. For long time I've always thought it would be great to have something that had a similar effect based on text input speed. Situations like getting into a massive battle, or leaving a battle with low health would have the music mutate to
- na85 8y agoI believe the first mainstream game with adaptive music like that was Half Life 2 in 2004.
- hrydgard 8y agoMario 64 did it in 1996. For example that early level with the shipwreck, the music morphs as you go into the water and dive around the wreck. If you go out of the water again the music morphs back to the original form.
- na85 8y agoI'm not sure that that counts. My recollection of that game was that it's a binary choice of being underwater/at the surface, whereas the music in HL2 in a given spot would change depending on what the enemies were doing, how fast you were going, whether or not you were driving, if you found ammo for the rocket launcher, etc.
- spiralganglion 8y agoLots of N64 games did this, especially the Rare ones — Banjo-Kazooie had a fair bit of music dynamism, Conker's had even more. It's pretty easy to do, and game devs figured it out pretty early on.
- silvester23 8y ago
- marstall 8y agoThis piece reminds me of Harold Budd's album "The Pearl" (1984)! Which is 42 minutes long - so another way to approach the same problem :) https://open.spotify.com/album/5SSf6lNbSoaAUx6PxQVjlP https://open.spotify.com/album/5SSf6lNbSoaAUx6PxQVjlP
- hotdogs 8y agoGreat writeup, generative.fm is awesome, I'll definitely be using that when I need to focus and nothing in my music library appeals to me.
- barbs 8y agoThat's so awesome. It'd be nice to have the bird noises in the background as well though I guess this would be tricky if it's using MIDI to play the music. I guess I could find some ambient bird noise track and play it alongside...
- spiralganglion 8y agoIt's not using midi, and yes, bird noises would be a perfect addition and totally easy to do with the Web Audio API. Great idea.
- 8bitsrule 8y agoMIDI (only controls sounds, does not generate them) is widely used to trigger samples, so slip some samples of bird noises into your mix and trigger away.
- chaseha 8y agoI find that perfectly quantized tracks sound artificial over time. Not sure how close “aisatsana” sticks to perfectly on-(half)-beat, but adding slightly random quantization offsets to each generated note could be interesting to lend the results a more "natural" sound
- danet 8y agoI tend to listen to ambient music. There's radio show on CBC radio 2 -- After Dark, that plays tunes with not too many lyrics.
- spiralganglion 8y agoCBC Radio 2 used to (or might still?) have a similar program called The Signal that was really good. And before it, there was a program called Brave New Waves that was probably my favourite late night show in existence. Really sad it doesn't exist anymore.
- danet 8y agoAfter dark is the contiuation of the signal -- same music but different host. I have archive of the last 3 years of the signal in mp3, it's about 90GB. Send me a message at gimmespam at flamy.ca and I'll send you a link.
- zeristor 8y agoMuzak missed a trick here
- 8bitsrule 8y agoOne tactic to roll your own is time-stretching. A useful and fun algo (since tamed in 1999) is the phase vocoder. Especially nice for instruments with rich spectrums. Example work (1986) Wishart's Vox 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y23kobWHs8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y23kobWHs8M
- vool 8y agoAs if aisatsana was not beautiful enough, it was first performed in London's Barbican Centre in 2012, on a suspended grand piano, swinging in the air ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJHsT8kEyzs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJHsT8kEyzs
- drumttocs8 8y agoAphex Twin as a top thread... this is why I love hacker news.
- shaftway 8y agoThis seems very similar to what the Infinite Jukebox does. Granted, it uses the straight audio, so it's more well suited to pop music. But here's the link for this track: http://infinitejukebox.playlistmachinery.com/?trid=TRIMVDB14AFE744C52 http://infinitejukebox.playlistmachinery.com/?trid=TRIMVDB14...