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elektro80
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 Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 6:48 pm Post subject:
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| dewdrop_world wrote: |
Speaking aesthetically, if not technically, I think a successful compositional algorithm captures some aspects of the composer's thought processes. |
An interesting observation. Intuitively I tend to agree. From my point of view our tools and machines are all part of the magic that defines what we are.
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destroyifyer
Joined: Mar 22, 2006
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Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 1:30 am Post subject:
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I am definately one of those "anti-preset" people, however some VST programs require that you start with a base preset. I occasionally will jack-up a VST preset until I figure it's re-arranged enough to be considered a "created" sound. If you re-arrange a preset, all except one setting, I believe a true "anti-preset" person would not consider this a unique noise, but that is...most definitely a matter of personal opinion. I realize I'm stumbling over my ideas right now. This is relevant to the algorithms- you definitely could consider an unchanged algorithm a preset.
dewdrop_world wrote:
| Quote: | | If your piece is largely algorithmically generated, but you're using somebody else's algorithms, how much can you say that the piece is "yours"? |
I hate to admit it, but one of my favorite synth sequences that I ever made ( one on my song Cloud Scream ) was mainly randomly generated using Tuareg 2. Reading this made me realize that I owe credit to the writer of that program, as well as computer, and chaos I suppose.
Quite interesting really. I guess I've never thought about that! 
Last edited by destroyifyer on Mon Jan 07, 2008 5:52 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Danno Gee Ray
Joined: Sep 25, 2005
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| Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 8:46 am Post subject:
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Does that mean that all modern oil painters owe a creative debt to Grumbacher or some other paint and pigment manufacturer.
The software, algorithms, computers are merely tools. They are not art in and of themselves, though they may be considered works of programming art. It is YOU the musician artist who wields these tools to your mind's end that creates the art, the music that is unique. These sort of debates are centuries old. In painting certain schools and many masters believed that anyone who did not grind their own pigments was less of an artist. I disagree. A musician doesn't have to be a luthier or instrument maker to be original and talented. They are different forms.
Find new tools, use them well, adapt them to YOUR style and needs. The product IS original and uniquely yours.
Just my opinion. |
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Acoustic Interloper
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
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| Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 1:00 pm Post subject:
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| dewdrop_world wrote: | | I feel, then, that to claim ownership of the music means being the owner of the algorithms also. If your piece is largely algorithmically generated, but you're using somebody else's algorithms, how much can you say that the piece is "yours"? |
This would seem to depend in part of the generality of the algorithm. A very specific algorithm that generates very specific notes, independent of who runs it, would seemingly belong to algorithm author. If the algorithm is a generator that accepts as input some sort of algorithmic description language and generates a score, for example an L System generator that is applied to music (haven't tried the latter software myself), then seemingly the person using the L-system would be the composer, since the generator algorithms are at this point in the public domain. For a more trivial example, if you use quicksort to sort notes by timing in a composition, should the inventor of quicksort get compose credit? Probably not.
| Quote: |
For myself, I have no interest in complete pieces composed beginning to end by algorithms, but I'm endlessly fascinated by the challenges of giving the computer the responsibility to generate some, or even most, elements of a musical texture (with some realtime guidance).
James |
I like computer generated accompaniment and improv. If I let the "MIDIME" engine runs on its own, it sounds pretty threadbare, but if it reacts to my playing in real time, it can surprise me. It's more than an instrument, though, because its reaction to my playing is non-linear and uses real-time variations in my performance of a piece in making its decisions, hence it surprises without arbitrary injection of randomness. It and I play in a closed loop. While that may not be composition, it seem to fit the title of this thread.
Merry Christmas.
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deknow
Joined: Sep 15, 2004
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Location: Leominster, MA (USA)
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| Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 1:14 pm Post subject:
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from having lots of conversations with dr t, i know that he immediately saw the possibilities of music made with manipulted datastreams rather than traditional instruments. he saw the midi software of the time (step edit, or use a musical kbd for input) as missing the point of what could be accomplished by musicians that might not be proficient instrumentalists.
his own setup (as i think you have recalled here before carlo), was a buchla thunder controlling the midi datastream in the atari computer. he really only used the thunder as a control surface (rather than using the thunders own programing to do complex things, he did the programing in the atari environment)....which is quite similar to his current video improv setup, that uses an maudio drum pad to control fades and effects.
his ideas were certainly ahead of their time.
deknow
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dewdrop_world
Joined: Aug 28, 2006
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| Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 8:48 am Post subject:
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| Danno Gee Ray wrote: | | Does that mean that all modern oil painters owe a creative debt to Grumbacher or some other paint and pigment manufacturer. |
WRT style of painting, of course not. But there is a debt... if there is no oil paint, you can't paint in oil!
| Acoustic Interloper wrote: | | For a more trivial example, if you use quicksort to sort notes by timing in a composition, should the inventor of quicksort get compose credit? Probably not. |
If you can make interesting music using only a quicksort algorithm, then... first, you're scary  and second, how much of the interest in the result would be due to the quicksort, and how much to the information fed into it?
I'm not saying you can't use established algorithms. Almost certainly the algorithmic composer will use LOTS of them! The thing is, you have to make decisions about which algorithms to use and how to apply them. That is a creative act. (Same for L systems - somebody [the composer] decides which rules to use, when and how.)
James
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Kassen
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| Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 9:03 am Post subject:
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| dewdrop_world wrote: |
If you can make interesting music using only a quicksort algorithm, then... first, you're scary and second, how much of the interest in the result would be due to the quicksort, and how much to the information fed into it?
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Some time ago I read a page comparing sorting algorithms, maybe it was on Wikipedia. It had animated GIF's to illustrate the pattern in which they sort and I have to say it all looked quite musical to me and Indeed I did consider basing a composition or series of compositions on them.
It was really quite nice with repeated patterns as the they focused on some sections and some tention as at times the patterns seemed to get more chaotic halfway into the process before "suddenly" heading straight for order.
Ah, found it; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksort
Here's another one with another sort of visualisation that has a different sort of tention;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_sort
that last one looks like a cool one to use to morph noise into saws,
There are more that have nice animations
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Acoustic Interloper
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dewdrop_world
Joined: Aug 28, 2006
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| Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 10:38 am Post subject:
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| Kassen wrote: | | Some time ago I read a page comparing sorting algorithms, maybe it was on Wikipedia. It had animated GIF's to illustrate the pattern in which they sort and I have to say it all looked quite musical to me and Indeed I did consider basing a composition or series of compositions on them. |
Right... but it also proves my point, because the music comes from the algorithms that you use to sonify the quicksort, not from the quicksort itself.
James
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Acoustic Interloper
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| Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 12:02 pm Post subject:
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I think we are all in agreement here. My point about this | dewdrop_world wrote: | | I feel, then, that to claim ownership of the music means being the owner of the algorithms also. If your piece is largely algorithmically generated, but you're using somebody else's algorithms, how much can you say that the piece is "yours"? |
was just that it depends on the input to the algorithms. If the generation algorithm is deterministic, then the algorithm author composed it. If it is non-deterministic, depending largely on the users' data or gestures, then the users act as composers. There are in-between, shared composer combinations, of course, just like there are in many jazz "interpretations" of standard pop tunes, which are at least partially new compositions.
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Kassen
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| Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 12:23 pm Post subject:
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| dewdrop_world wrote: |
Right... but it also proves my point, because the music comes from the algorithms that you use to sonify the quicksort, not from the quicksort itself.
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Yes, clearly, I just wanted to talk about my ideas there, not take a stance either way.
I agree with you but I would also say you couldn't claim the music *didn't* come from quick-sort. That would be like traditional piano playing while claiming the music didn't come from traditional tuning.
It would be a context, a method, maybe just a important source of inspiration but it would be there.
Fortunately Quicksort's creator doesn't seem to mind if we implement his work and it would be a interesting angle to go from chaos to order like that especially as different algorithms could go from the same chaos to the same order by different roads . I remember reading your very interesting blog/bio where you talk about this tendency in electronic music to start from something orderly and moving towards a sort of climatic destruction of it. I realise this is only loosely related to what you wrote about but to me it seems linked in some hard to pinpoint abstract way.
More topical, I don't think you can get around making choices, even if it is saying what the coin-toss means, it's obvious but I don't think you can get around being at least co-composer of the music you compose. I also think it's quite hard not to share this with others. In many cases I think that in electronic music the instrument designer is a kind of co-composer though his role is often attributed to the machine (Dom and Roland....). Much like Cage still had to say what the coin toss meant and so became the composer of those pieces a instrument designer also determines where and what choices can be made for some styles of music I'd call him a co-composer.
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rachmiel
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| Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 1:04 pm Post subject:
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everybody's borrowing from everybody aren't they? it's one of the hallmarks of our time. group mind, enabled by digital (exactly reproducible) media and the internet. if i use algorithm X, the personality of the algorithm might be audible ... but algorithm X is most likely a hodgepodge of other algorithms developed by other programmers, so no one really OWNs algorithm X.
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TonE
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| Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 11:39 pm Post subject:
Re: Man vs. Machine or ManMachine? |
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| Kassen wrote: | Current technology is capable of both generating notes and generating sounds, just like the person behind it is.
This means your synths could play music composed by you or you could play music composed (or generated) by the computer or you could have any number of hybrid forms in between. You might call those jams.
Where are *you* on this scale? Do you find yourself fighting the technology for controll or do you feel more like you are coöperating with it? |
As long as algorithms can not generate music which sounds like this, I prefer the human style more, but having algorithms which speed up some parts of the composing or experimenting process is not a bad idea. Can you recognize the musicality, the rhythm, the groove, the beautiful melodies, the change of power (jump to 3:07) and silent sections (jump to 2:35), this is what I love! Of course you could find many examples from different genres, I gave just one example from one genre. |
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TonE
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| Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 4:15 am Post subject:
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| elektro80 wrote: | Hmm.. another thing here is the understanding of the term randomness. Some music that possibly sounds extremely random might in fact be completely rule based with no room for truly random events.
Say you construct a patch that first builds very complex oscillator waveforms. The waveforms are then treated using logic gates and stuff to build musical events. You might build in a timer and event loops/feedback and stuff. Every time this machine runs it will sound different, but the actual music is constructed 100% rule based. The patch does this with no random functions. The resulting music might be damned close to noise. is this randomness? Not really.. but it can be argued. |
I think it depends on the hierarchy level where the randomness or in the contrary case the rules are applied. If the rules results in the sound output are in a too low-level, like ms or even micro-seconds, then our brain might not be able to decode it fast enough and feel any patterns to enjoy, that it would be categorized instead as "random" or noise.
So in short it depends on the listening decoding limitations of the human brain, I would say. It would be interesting to find out this limit/border a little more in detail. |
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