Generative music is a term popularized by Brian Eno to describe music that is ever-different and changing, and that is created by a system.
Historical background
In 1995 whilst working with SSEYO's Koan software, Brian Eno used the term "generative music" to describe any music that is ever-different and changing, created by a system. The term has since gone on to be used to refer to a wide range of music, from entirely random music mixes created by multiple simultaneous CD playback, through to live rule-based computer composition. Koan was SSEYO's first real-time music generation system, developed for the Windows platform. Work on Koan was started in 1990, and the software was first released to the public in 1994. In 1995 Brian Eno started working with SSEYO's Koan Pro software, work which led to the 1996 publication of his title ''. In 2007 SSEYO evolved Koan into what became Intermorphic , and eventually Noatikl itself evolved into ; was launched in 2018 for all of iOS, macOS, Windows and Android. Eno's early relationship with SSEYO Koan and Intermorphic co-founder Tim Cole was captured and published in his 1995 diary A Year with Swollen Appendices.
Software
Many software programs have been written to create generative music.
Others
Programs from other sources include the following:
There are four primary perspectives on generative music :
Linguistic/structural
Music composed from analytic theories that are so explicit as to be able to generate structurally coherent material. This perspective has its roots in the generative grammars of language and music, which generate material with a recursivetree structure.
Interactive/behavioural
Music generated by a system component that has no discernible musical inputs. That is, "not transformational". The software by , and the Koan software by SSEYO used by Brian Eno to create , are both examples of this approach.
Creative/procedural
Music generated by processes that are designed and/or initiated by the composer. Steve Reich's It's Gonna Rain and Terry Riley's In C are examples of this.
Biological/emergent
Non-deterministic music, or music that cannot be repeated, for example, ordinary wind chimes. This perspective comes from the broader generative art movement. This revolves around the idea that music, or sounds may be "generated" by a musician "farming" parameters within an ecology, such that the ecology will perpetually produce different variation based on the parameters and algorithms used. An example of this technique is Joseph Nechvatal's Viral symphOny: a collaborative electronic noise music symphony created between the years 2006 and 2008 using custom artificial life software based on a viral model.
Other notes
Brian Eno, who coined the term generative music, has used generative techniques on many of his works, starting with Discreet Music up to and including Another Day on Earth. His works, lectures, and interviews on the subject have done much to promote generative music in the avant-gardemusic community. Eno used Koan generative music system, to create his hybrid album , which is probably his first public use of the term generative music.
Lerdahl and Jackendoff's publication described a generative grammar for homophonic tonal music, based partially on a Schenkerian model. While originally intended for analysis, significant research into automation of this process in software is being carried out by .
In It's Gonna Rain, an early work by contemporary composer Steve Reich, overlapping tape loops of the spoken phrase "it's gonna rain" are played at slightly different speeds, generating different patterns through phasing.
