thawkins

Basically I think for a generative piece to "work" well, you need to tune both the sound/mix aspects and the generative process for that particular piece. You can probably have a general approach on how you set up a generative process, but it's not going to be possible to just copy/paste the generative algorithm to a new sound/mix and just press play and have it not suck ass.

I think first of all it's safe to assume that every example of generative music you have heard is heavily curated-mixed-edited. By that I mean there is a human who selects the sounds, the balance and a bunch of other things, like whether the result sucks ass or is it good to post online. This means that really no example we can find online isn't really pure unadultered generative, but it's probably true that the generative composition process played a big part in creating the piece. The second thing that comes to mind is: what does it mean when you say "meaningless and uninteresting variations"? I am thinking here that a lot of atonal-inharmonic music relies heavily on the ostinato concept, i.e. even the weirdest thing starts being catchy if you repeat it enough times. This is kind of at odds with the concept of meaningless-uninteresting variations, because you can't really predict beforehand what variations will suck ass and what variations will trigger the ostinato/pattern-matching part of the human brain. And personally I have had this happen many times in my generative experiments - record a randomized 4-bar MIDI loop with the most basic piano sound, let it play for a while and you kind of start hearing patterns and melodies going on, even though it's a simple one shot random thing. But I think what I did with generative kind of makes sense with your idea. I was not smart enough (or had time) to figure out some system that feeds on itself, so I really simplified my approach. I figured that if I fade one repeating random loop into another slowly enough, then it would be a fluid change and I could trick the listener to believe that hey this one melody just morphed into another. I also figured that if I separated the rhythm-pitch parts of a MIDI loop I could replace the rhythm but keep the melody/pitch progression the same or vice versa: replace the melody but keep the rhythm (spoiler: I didn't end up doing that trick much). Finally, I picked a set of pitches for each element (bass, mids, high, slow ambient) so that a) they would be in the same scale and b) each would be in their own frequency region and the elements wouldn't fight with each other for space. Anyway you can hear the result in my signature. I will be honest though - the raw output of that generative algorithm needed a lot of tweaking to get to the end result. It was a really fun experiment though, and I am planning to try and work more like this in the future.

So far the only things I have done in Max is a M4L device that has all the presets on my XV5080 in a neat dropdown for selecting sounds in Live and being able to save those settings in the project. More on topic, I think someone shared this ages ago (maybe in this very thread), but I am going to repost it since it will probably resonate a lot with the crowd here: it's about sequencing tools and trips in Max.

It took me like 1-2 working days spread across a few weeks building the Pure Data patch I used to generate (= literally hit play in Live and recorded about 45 minutes worth of loops) the album that I am currently shilling in my signature (https://slowtonecollages.bandcamp.com/album/generations-20200612). So for starting up with MIDI pattern fuckery, it takes very little time to get from learning something and having fun with it. For audio stuff in Max and Pure Data, I honestly have not bothered to learn much, because that part is infinitely deep and I have never been a sound design type. Back when I used Pure Data more the problem also was that I could not have the patch with in the Live project, so routing MIDI and audio was necessary, and finally I could not save the whole thing into a Live project in order to be able to come back to it later and have everything working (which is how I like to work more or less). Now that I have Suite, I have M4L and I could do this project based workflow much better, but I just have not gotten into it yet. Anyway my point was that even though the linked videos show some cool and really complex stuff, it's not actually that difficult to get started with Max/PD AND have fun with it. After all, even it sucks ass and sounds like a dying helicopter, you can always sample that stuff and later tell everyone that you were planning to make a drum kit out of it anyway. ?

This looks like a numbers station. I wish I had any photos from that era when I first started to make music. It would probably be a picture of an upright piano or a regular computer though. Exciting!

I could never get behind Elektron because I always thought that if I spend that much on a music thing, I might as well get a laptop. Now I do realise that physical knob workflows are an important thing and all, so I did end up getting a MPC 1000. However I am still quite computer centric so I have not gone too deep on it.

I am using M1 MacOS on dark mode and none of the parameter values show, because the input boxes background is not dark as it should be. At least this version managed to create some sound. I think it's interesting for when you want to generate some samples to build a drum kit out of, but then I am not a bleeps person so much.

It's definitely a neat concept for a channel, although I don't feel like I have time to watch this kind of stuff attentively. I definitely like audio demos with no talking, that's for sure. Maybe I should make an effort to have this stuff playing in the background when doing other things, so that when something cool happens I can check it out and see how it's made.

I don't think there is a rule that says that generative has to be a process that feeds back on itself or something like that. It can just be something that evolves over time according to some rules/definitions.

I mean he would be right not to add MIDI generation - that's a job for a different tool anyway. M4L and Pure Data, hell any modern DAW should have the basic building blocks: an arpeggiator, pitch randomiser, velocity modulation/gating and scale normalizer to force all the mess into the notes that you actually selected. Here's an Ableton Live rack that does this. No M4L devices or advanced stuff like that - if you ever had a Live Lite license from somewhere, you too can do this at the comfort of your own home. Slap that on a MIDI track, play your favorite chord and that's basically it. You get the best results with a plugin/synth that responds nicely to higher/lower velocities. Most of the mappings should be self-explanatory. Threshold maps to the last Velocity device's Lowest parameter. The point is that by playing with Threshold/Random you control the density of notes generated, and by combining with Final Out Hi, you can sort of "fade" in/out your generative MIDI from a deluge of notes to a quiet trickle.

I'll have to be careful now to get famous due to the music, not some other stupid crap, though. Thanks, glad you like it!

Not really on topic but artist names starting with or containing "data" get a massive -12 penalty in originality and even if their stuff sounds cool I sometimes skip hitting play (not this time though). Anyway that's not generative at all, you see the guy is clicking around doing stuff! That's cheating. You ought to just film your massive pile of modular gear tinkling on it's own because that's what generative really is: if your gear costs above a certain limit of €€€, it starts making music on it's own and all you have to do is keep the power on and setup a GoPro along with a YouTube channel - viola passive income! Anyway x2 the DAW is Bitwig, right? I am super not familiar with that so I am now wondering how much of that what is happening is thanks to the DAW features and how much is built into Vital?

Apparently the CDs have sold out, which is great news. I have a few download codes so if you want one, please PM me.

What did you GAS a bit over and it ended up amazing? Each time I upgraded my laptop it's been quite nice, but for other gear it's probably the PreSonus Studiolive 24R. All the previous interfaces either ran out of I/O, had latency/buffer/noise/whatever issues - this thing just works and has builtin EQ and a million possibilities that also just work. What did you GAS hard over and it ended up a major disappointment? Koma Elektronik Field Kit & all the mics and assorted junk I got because I was so stoked about doing some musique concrete experiments and to build a DYI drum kit kind of. The reality is that I too am a computer guy, and I don't have hard disk space for gigabytes of crappily recorded audio of me bonking some kitchen pot. I am keeping it around though because I suck at selling anything and maybe I will get around to incorporating it in my setup because thanks to the Studiolive, I have all the I/O I ever need. What do you regret selling? My Mackie CR1604 mixer. At the time it was the correct decision, but now I could use something like that to play around with a DAWless approach. That's the one thing the Studiolive lacks - real physical faders to mess with. Edit: honestly most of my purchasing decisions have been wrong, when I look back at it. But it was all necessary to get to the point where I am now.

This is totally my vibe recently. Nice work! Reminds me of https://musicforprogramming.net/ which I listen to a LOT.

Trying to do a "don't buy stuff you don't need September", anyone wants to join me in this? It's been 3 days and I haven't bought any stuff I don't need. For example, I did not buy a headphone cable extension because I don't need it. I also did not buy a pair of XLR cables because I could swap out the ones I was using for my monitors with some TRS-XLR and so I did not need the extra XLR. In fact so far I don't even need the XLR cables I have because they are sitting in a box. I might need them if I decide to record anything with a microphone though. I also did not buy a Zoom H6 even though I thought I might need it for recording some band rehearsals. Stay strong!

I am happy to finally announce the release of a long in the works album. Special thanks to @purlieu for suggesting some labels to reach out to get this released. Preorders on Slow Tone Collages here: https://slowtonecollages.bandcamp.com/album/generations-20200612

It should work even without axis locking, but since I don’t have any hands on experience using a DAW with neither trackballs nor the Nob, I was just theorizing about what features would be needed. Somehow I am pretty sure that just getting a trackball mouse would be enough.

Too weird to live, too rare to die.

This makes sense. Of course Ableton does not have axis lock functionality, so this approach is dead in the water.

It would be nice to have the axis disable/enable buttons on the mouse directly, because then it's a one-hand operation to mess with faders.

I know there are gamer mice with switchable dpi for precision stuff. There should also be autocad mice with lockable axes and at least one maker - Kensington - seems to allow this feature in software. I need to research more.

For some reason I am wondering if there exist any small form-factor trackball mice that could work also like the Nob with some keyboard shortcuts or even physical mouse button comboes. It would be really nice for fader-knob control in a DAW, for example. This kind of thing probably does not exist, though.

https://reverb.com/marketplace?product_type=drums-and-percussion&query=Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer But once again I would say that if you want a real TR808, but don’t know where to get one… then you probably can’t tell the difference in sound between the real one and the official Roland remake or the Behringer clone. Which makes this a huge waste of money.

My strategy is only uploading and sharing the bad middling tracks, then posting on forums to keep up an impression like I am constantly working on finishing the good, secret tracks that will really change the face of electronic music forever.* * - for the worse.