Thoughts On Generative Music

Rolf Fr., 21.07.2023 - 05:00

Composing And Scripting Generative Music

In this title of one of the chapters of volume 3 of my e-book trilogy about making generative music with modular synths I use the term “scripting” instead of “writing scores”. The reason is clear: we can write the score of a piece of (neo)classic music or even of a simple pop song. But we cannot write the score of a piece of generative music – because it´s generative.

And the meaning of the term “composing” is different from what some of you (and I) have learnt when studying music, when writing their (our) treatises about Beethoven´s Piano Sonata No. 29 (“Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier”) - do you remember the story of hyw Beethoven added the opening chords after having composed this complete monstsous piece? - or their (our) homework about Bach´s technique of modulation or, or, or.

Composing a piece of generative music is more like laying out a master plan without taking too much care about the details, details which I leave to the machine, to the system, to fill in. In part II of this book I introduce different approaches to making generative music. They are different in many aspects, but one of these aspects is the degree of detailedness of such a master plan. And again we meet the basic question of all composers/producers of generative music: How much of the piece is mine, and how much is the machine´s?

But how to write such a master plan? What has to be written down or drawn in or drafted in such a master plan “score”? What, and also: how? Are we forced to develop a system of special symbols (like in “classic” music there are the written notes, the tempo, the volume, the emphasis etc)? How has such a master plan to look like, so that we will be able to understand it and reproduce the patch even in 20 years? How must such a master plan look like to enable another musician to understand it, to grasp how the piece shall musically develop overtime, and what´s fixed and what´s generative, what´s probabilistic, and what´s clean randomness?

In other words: what kind of scripting system has to be developed?

… to be continued

GM_1 https://www.dev.rofilm-media.net/node/335

GM_2 https://www.dev.rofilm-media.net/node/343

GM_3 https://www.dev.rofilm-media.net/node/344

GM_4 https://www.dev.rofilm-media.net/node/358

GM_5 https://www.dev.rofilm-media.net/node/365

GM_6 https://www.dev.rofilm-media.net/node/374

GM_7 https://www.dev.rofilm-media.net/node/381

GM_8 https://www.dev.rofilm-media.net/node/386

GM_9 https://www.dev.rofilm-media.net/node/391

GM_10 https://www.dev.rofilm-media.net/node/404