Machine Learning Systems in Concert

My partner in crime (Dr. Bob Sturm) and I recently hosted a concert of music co-created with computers. The concert ended with the first performance of my piece Bastard Tunes:

Read about the composition process of this piece and about the research that went into creating the system.

Is there no musical repetition here

While there are no note-pattern repetitions in here, when listening to this - as music - I hear repeated ideas. An appoggiatura (short-long) motif is heard multiple times, as is the upward motion through the keyboard.
This is a neat illustration of the problem of identifying music with its notation. Equating music with a sequence of note onsets, because this is how it looks on the page.

Pd patches

• A repository for Pd with an interactive website, examples patches, and documentation of a variety of project.
•  Pd website includes a section of patches shared by users
• A modular synth build with Pd with some examples. 

Automatic composition

In the words of the author:

"Autocousmatic generates electroacoustic music intended for acousmatic presentation. Based only on a seed directory of source sound files, a desired duration and number of output channels, the program creates multi-channel spectromorphological tape pieces. Audio analysis capabilities are used to discover 'useful' portions of sound files and assess processed files. The project investigates a deeper relation from machine listening to algorithmic composition tasks, and welcomes feedback."

Listen to some of the examples on the website and judge for yourself. And you can read Nick's CMJ article about the system.

Technology project meets counterpoint rules

An interesting set of hardware/software instruments developed as an MA project from NYU based on aspect of Baroque music.

Live coding

Here is a documentary explaining what is live coding. And a version of Reich's Piano Phase done with live coding. 

Paul Lansky

American composer Paul Lansky has been involved with electronic music since the 70s. His piece Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion uses a processing technique called linear predictive coding (LPC) to transform a recorded voice. He is using a single reading of the poem to generate 6 'versions' of the poem. Three of those are available on his website (compare, for instance,  'Her Reflection' with 'Her Song').  Notjustmoreidelchatter is another voice based piece. You can read more about Lansky, with detailed examination of several of his compositions.

FM Synthesis

A basic introduction to frequency modulation in Pd and a video tutorial for building an fm patch . A demonstration of the Yamaha DX7. An extensive discussion of the properties of frequency modulation from Barry Truax (with links to examples from his compositions using this technique). And a technical explanation of FM with illustrations of the sidebands and more from another master of the technique - Bill Schottstaedt.

Several illustrations of configuration for fm-synthesis sounds (bell-like, brass-like, etc.). A general tutorial about fm-synth with reference to various software implementations. 

This method was pioneered by John Chowning. Here he is explaining how he discovered this technique: 

 His piece Stria applies the Golden Ratio to constructing its fm-synthesised tones.

Computer Music Journal dedicated an issue to this important work, were you can read about the techniques used in the composition of this piece. And here is an article by John articulating his ideas about the link between synthesising new sounds and tuning systems that computers make available.

Generative Art

Darwin Tunes is a project from Imperial College using the idea of evolution by selection and applies it to music generation.
This short documentary form PBS provides some interesting examples of generative art:

BoxCar2D is an interesting and fun demonstration of the power of evolutionary processes.

Introduction to Algorithmic Composition

A short student essay about algorithmic composition provides a good overview and link to sources.  This video shows one instance of using Pd to generate music algorithmically:

A more complex example:

And an example of using cellular automata (this one implemented in supercollider):