
Programming Music: The Applications of Algorithmic Composition [pdf] - lainon
https://getinspired.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/MU208_Report.pdf
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purple-dragon
I hesitate to be contrarian because I don't want to discourage what I perceive
to be an innocent enough exploratory effort by curious and creative
students... but as a long time drummer and computer scientist, this document
was underwhelming and surprisingly unscientific (I guess my expectations were
set high once I saw the mit.edu domain).

A related idea that may be interesting to explore are approaches to identify
and classify hip-hop beat cliches across different genres and time periods
(and accordingly to generate new beats that approximate the respective genres
or time periods' aesthetics).

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andars
If you are interested in this, I would recommend looking up the Extempore
programming language/environment and some of Andrew Sorensen's live coding
performances. Even if live coding is not your thing, it's definitely
interesting.

~~~
efnx
Also check out supercollider and csound.

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gtani
We've had a bunch of really good threads, when i have time i'll stick them in
pinboard.in:

Faust:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13012880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13012880)

audioKit:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9903760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9903760)

pure data: very difficult to search for

common lisp et al:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12518768](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12518768)

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FuNe
Bjork (I think) said that electronic music has no soul cause no one bothered
to put one in it. As a long time listener of mainly electronic music, I agree.
Among the various genres and artists of electro music there is a ratio of
computer/human input to each piece. I find the pieces were the human input is
minimal, boring and dry. In a way the human in these sorts of music is the
necessary ghost in the machine that makes the piece worth its salt.

I would be very impressed if a fully computer synthesized piece would actually
strike a cord in humans. I'm not talking about brutal bam-bam-bam techno
pieces that evoke no emotions whatsoever.

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ooqr
Electronic music lowers the barrier of entry, so you get LOTS of crap, whether
it's just uninspired but well intentioned, or freakishly aggressive 1000bpm
avante garde nonsense.

That said, if you're a long time listener and you've never found any producers
with soul, look again. Popular example: Daft Punk.

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pierrec
Generative hip-hop beats, looks nice. As I see it, the sequencing isn't the
hardest part in hip-hop beats, though: a lot of the magic is in the timbre.
Sampling, mixing, etc. are often what captivates me the most. Imagine doing
that algorithmically - foraging through a collection of samples, processing
them, chopping them up and making beats out of it. A similar constraint-based
approach might work well, though probably a lot more work.

Anyways, who are the authors? Nowhere to be found! Sure it's a class project
but that's no excuse! And they should publish the BeatOven source, would love
to play around with it.

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Nition
There is one absolute classic work in that field that I know of. It's called
Designing Sound, by Andy Farnell: [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/designing-
sound](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/designing-sound)

~~~
gtani
There's other classics by Martin Russ, Miller Puckette, Curtis Roads, Allen
Strange, Perry Cook.

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errozero
I have added a randomize feature to the Acid Machine web app. It works by
chopping up the pattern into blocks, then goes through the steps in the block
and selects a random note (or silence) from the currently selected scale.

Then it moves to the next block and randomly decides whether to re-use the
previous block or create a new one. This stops it from sounding completely
random in a bad way.

Selecting the Arabic scale creates some interesting patterns.

[http://www.errozero.co.uk/acid-machine](http://www.errozero.co.uk/acid-
machine)

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taksintikk
I have noticed gcode for cnc / 3D printing spits out melodies via the stepper
motors.

Seems like music might even be a more pragmatic means of communication than
numbers.

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auggierose
That's some atrocious type setting.

~~~
tinix
word

