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The details still escape me as I feel like I read the words but didn't get the meaning, which is by no means a knock on the write-up, I'm just a complete fool w

The details still escape me as I feel like I read the words but didn't get the meaning, which is by no means a knock on the write-up, I'm just a complete fool when it comes to musical technology and recording. However, it is a delightfully formatted experience and I spent several minutes playing with the randomize buttons on the site. Don't think any of the resulting mixes sounded bad, but Eno's original is, of course, unmatched. Would be interesting to see something similar for more traditional genres, where a song is picked apart and you can then randomize its bits and see if anything beautiful comes out.

petercooper 4y ago
It's a quite different experience to a Web page, but if you want to play with messing about with music without becoming a musician as such, https://sonic-pi.net/ https://sonic-pi.net/ is absolutely fantastic as you can manipulate samples and sounds using a Ruby-like language. For example, this sort of fiddling: https://youtu.be/DdtcMf9YI7s?t=508 https://youtu.be/DdtcMf9YI7s?t=508
chalst 4y ago
There used to be quite a thing for randomised conpositions in the Baroque era and later, called Musikalisches Würfelspiel. There was also a thing around tape cut-ups in the 1950s, with William Burroughs being very into this stuff, with David Bowie later picking some of this stuff up. It was more about deconstructing expectations than creating something beautiful, but some of the material is very interesting. For the first, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikalisches_W%C3%BCrfelspiel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikalisches_W%C3%BCrfelspi...
- dclowd9901 4y ago
  Incidentally, Bowie would even do this with lyrics. He would write up lyrics or some phrases, then cut up words or combinations of words, and move them around. That’s why (I always thought), he lyrics gave off a common theme with really interesting and novel turns of phrase.
  - achairapart 4y ago
    Bowie even came up with a software in the 90s called the Verbasizer to further automate his cut-ups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3IKLMgFaDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3IKLMgFaDA There is also a web app version at https://verbasizer.com/ https://verbasizer.com/
    - chalst 4y ago
      Interesting. An associate of Burroughs, Ian Sommerville, wrote a program in the 1960s to permute lists of words to help Burroughs for similar reasons.
achairapart 4y ago
Music is about tempo and sync. In fact, nowadays you can throw anything into a modern DAW software and it will instantly sync everything for you. Eno instead put randomness/chaos at play by using tape loops of different length, so they will never (or very hardly) repeat at the same interval again, or, in his own words: What I mean is they all repeat in cycles that are called incommensurable — they are not likely to come back into sync again. Think of a series of little music boxes with each a different tune and length, you start playing one a time in random order, and the whole epiphany is that you expect chaos and dissonance but instead you still got an organic and nice harmony. And that's the basics of generative music, in the most simple words I can find.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  For another interesting musical experiment, listen to "Poème symphonique", a "composition" that basically sets up 100 metronomes, winds them up, sets them to random (I believe) speeds, and lets them play and wind down. It starts chaotic, until they eventually run out and form interesting rhythmical patterns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAYGJmYKrI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAYGJmYKrI4
  - bambax 4y ago
    Didn't know about that! But Steve Reich also did many experiments with musical repetitions; his compositions are supposed to be played live (not rely on machines) but they can also be set up in a DAW. "Piano Phase" is pretty easy to implement for example. Contrary to the quote by Eno in the article, Reich's loops are be "commensurable" -- after a certain point they repeat exactly. It seems that's what interests him: some kind of mathematical predictability.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      Reich's earliest experiments with what he terms "phasing" were done on (tape) machines. It was only after a few successful tape pieces that he began to wonder if humans could actual perform music composed around the same principle (they could!)

petercooper 4y ago

It's a quite different experience to a Web page, but if you want to play with messing about with music without becoming a musician as such, https://sonic-pi.net/ https://sonic-pi.net/ is absolutely fantastic as you can manipulate samples and sounds using a Ruby-like language. For example, this sort of fiddling: https://youtu.be/DdtcMf9YI7s?t=508 https://youtu.be/DdtcMf9YI7s?t=508

chalst 4y ago

There used to be quite a thing for randomised conpositions in the Baroque era and later, called Musikalisches Würfelspiel. There was also a thing around tape cut-ups in the 1950s, with William Burroughs being very into this stuff, with David Bowie later picking some of this stuff up. It was more about deconstructing expectations than creating something beautiful, but some of the material is very interesting. For the first, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikalisches_W%C3%BCrfelspiel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikalisches_W%C3%BCrfelspi...

dclowd9901 4y ago
Incidentally, Bowie would even do this with lyrics. He would write up lyrics or some phrases, then cut up words or combinations of words, and move them around. That’s why (I always thought), he lyrics gave off a common theme with really interesting and novel turns of phrase.
- achairapart 4y ago
  Bowie even came up with a software in the 90s called the Verbasizer to further automate his cut-ups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3IKLMgFaDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3IKLMgFaDA There is also a web app version at https://verbasizer.com/ https://verbasizer.com/
  - chalst 4y ago
    Interesting. An associate of Burroughs, Ian Sommerville, wrote a program in the 1960s to permute lists of words to help Burroughs for similar reasons.

achairapart 4y ago

Music is about tempo and sync. In fact, nowadays you can throw anything into a modern DAW software and it will instantly sync everything for you. Eno instead put randomness/chaos at play by using tape loops of different length, so they will never (or very hardly) repeat at the same interval again, or, in his own words: What I mean is they all repeat in cycles that are called incommensurable — they are not likely to come back into sync again. Think of a series of little music boxes with each a different tune and length, you start playing one a time in random order, and the whole epiphany is that you expect chaos and dissonance but instead you still got an organic and nice harmony. And that's the basics of generative music, in the most simple words I can find.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
For another interesting musical experiment, listen to "Poème symphonique", a "composition" that basically sets up 100 metronomes, winds them up, sets them to random (I believe) speeds, and lets them play and wind down. It starts chaotic, until they eventually run out and form interesting rhythmical patterns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAYGJmYKrI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAYGJmYKrI4
- bambax 4y ago
  Didn't know about that! But Steve Reich also did many experiments with musical repetitions; his compositions are supposed to be played live (not rely on machines) but they can also be set up in a DAW. "Piano Phase" is pretty easy to implement for example. Contrary to the quote by Eno in the article, Reich's loops are be "commensurable" -- after a certain point they repeat exactly. It seems that's what interests him: some kind of mathematical predictability.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    Reich's earliest experiments with what he terms "phasing" were done on (tape) machines. It was only after a few successful tape pieces that he began to wonder if humans could actual perform music composed around the same principle (they could!)