Generative Experiment (MP3)

The blog of musician Alec Vance, aleatoric.backporchrevolution.com, takes its name — ale{atori}c, as he displays it in the site’s header — from a useful expansion of his given name. He’s Alex, his blog aleatoric, which Webster’s defines as “characterized by chance or indeterminate elements,” both of which words (chance, indeterminate) are closely associated with the work of John Cage. In a recent post, Vance dug into his exploration of aleatoric music, specifically “generative” music, and his attempts to, as he put it, “start simple.” Of course, as anyone who’s played with Conway’s Game of Life knows, the idea of a simple start is a meaningful one, for from simple starts complex structures may grow. Vance titled the 16th in his series of investigations into generative music “Opalize” (MP3), perhaps after Opal, the former record label of Brian Eno, whom he lists as one of his inspirations.

Vance’s vision here of generative music — that is, of music that is the result of a system set in motion, rather than of a hard-coded (aka “deterministic”) score that is interpreted — involves setting layers of randomized events atop each other. In this regard, he notes Eno’s Bloom app for Apple iOS, which involved “random ambient music based on a handful of parameters the user defines.” He also credits Terry Riley’s “In C,” whose structure of ambient counterpoint informs “Opalize.” Writes Vance:

I was able to take a simple 2-note passage (that forms the main drone) — playing only very long notes of C and F alternating which you can here, below — then separately for each of 2 additional “solo”synths, repitches randomly and remaps to a note on the C major pentatonic scale. These come and go randomly based on probabilities I set up and on multiples of 8 bars. Then I added a drum machine loop, which also comes in based on random probabilities. Finally, I added … some random feedback to the main drone and the drum machine at unexpected moments.

The result is very much as described, a series of shifting plates that provide a kind of doubled randomness: first, the structure of the individual lines, which are often interrupted by sudden variations (a rupture generally softened by the tonality Vance has employed), and second, the manner in which those varied plates interact. “Might be too jarring for the effect I was originally going for though,” he writes of his placement of the drum machine part, but overall the work, which is heard here in a 20-minute example, is only chaotic to the extent that it is lively — which is to say, full of life.

Original post at aleatoric.backporchrevolution.com.