Chapter 1. Meeting 1, Foundations: Algorithmic and Generative Music Systems 1.1. Announcements • 21M.380: Music Technology: Algorithmic and Generative Music Systems 1.2. Overview • The last 10 years of algorithmic and generative music systems • What are algorithmic and generative music systems? • Two examples • About this course 1.3. Generative Systems: Definitions • Machines that make music • Humans that use or make machines to make music • Humans that use or make machines to help them make music • Humans that use or make machines to help them make components of their music 1.4. A New Field of Compositional Research • Generative music with a computer took many names: • Algorithmic composition • Computer music • Score synthesis • Computer-aided (or -assisted) composition • Computer-aided algorithmic composition (CAAC) • A new type of generative (rather than reductive) music theory 11.5. Computer-Aided Algorithmic Composition: Definition • A negative definition • A CAAC system is software that facilitates the generation of new music by means other than the manipulation of a direct music representation (Ariza 2005b) • New music: a unique musical variant, not just as copy • Output may be in the form of any sound or sound parameter data, from a sequence of samples to the notation of a complete composition • A “direct music representation” refers to a linear, literal, or symbolic representation of complete musical events, such as an event list (a score in Western notation or a MIDI file) or an ordered list of amplitude values (a digital audio file or stream) • If the representation provided to the user is the same as the output, the representation may reasonably be considered direct. • Anything that is not a direct representation employs CAAC 1.6. A Wide Range of Interactions and Collaborations • Machines can be used to create complete structucres • Machines can be used to create small fragments that are manually integrated • Machines can be used to create guidelines, contexts, or situations for human music making 1.7. Two Examples • I: Minuets and Contredances • II: babelcast 1.8. I: Minuets and Contredances • Minuet: a French dance in moderate triple meter, popular in aristocratic society from mid 17th century to late 18th century (Grove Music Online) • Textbook composition method: two or four bar groups, each section being 8 or 16 bars long • Audio played in class: Bach: Minuet in G, MWV Anh 114 2• Audio played in class: Mozart: Minuet in G, K. 1 1.9. I: Minutes and Contredances: Musical Dice Games • 1757-1812: at least 20 musical dices games published (Kirnberger, CPE Bach, J Haydn, Mozart, others) • Musical composition game, one of many 18th-century parlor games (Hedges 1978, p. 180) • A table is used to translate the sum of two dice to appropriate score positions • Score positions specify complete measure-length segments for each possible phrase position • German composer Kirnberger published one of the first in 1757 345• Numerous versions of Musikalisches Würfelspiel attributed to Mozart • The version attributed to Mozart was first published two years after his death by Juhan Julius Hummel (1793) and includes two similar games: one for Minuets and another for contredances • Two 8-bar phrases are created from combining 176 pre-composed measures • The last bar of each phrase always uses the same measure 1.10. I: Minuets and Contredances: The First Computer Implementation • 1955: David Caplin and Dietrich Prinz write a program to generate and synthesize the Mozart Dice Game for contredances on a Ferranti Mark 1* (MIRACLE) at Shell laboratories in Amsterdam (Ariza 2010) • Likely the first use of a computer to generate music • Ferranti Mark 1* (MIRACLE) 6 © source unknown. All rights reserved. This content is excluded from our CreativeCommons license. For more information, see http://ocw.mit.edu/fairuse.Audio sample played in class. 1.11. I: Minutes and Contredances: Motivations and Meanings • Why do this? How is this possible? • Is new music being made? • What meaning, if any, is conveyed? 1.12. II: The babelcast • An algorithmic, computer generated podcast series (Ariza 2007b) Audio RSS URL: (http://www.flexatone.net/babelcast.xml) Video RSS URL: (http://www.flexatone.net/babelcast-zoetrope.xml) • First released 5 August 2005, around one episode a month since • Created with athenaCL, Python, and Csound • Distributed in three formats: mp3, (-mosaic) m4a, and (-zoetrope) m4v 1.13. II: The babelcast: Information Abduction and Reduction • Gather sounds of politicians and political commentators • Gather images of politicians and political commentators • Favor primary sources • Favor massively redundant surplus media: images and sounds that are obtained by many sources 1.14. II: The babelcast: The Process • Sounds are manually collected with minimal editing • images are automatically downloaded and then manually filtered • Around 40 Texture-generating procedures for athenaCL are configured for each episode • Some Textures create noises 7• Some Textures process samples • Csound instruments use vocoders, granular synthesis methods, and other techniques • Between 100 and 200 Textures are generated and mixed into a single audio file • Images are randomly selected, cropped, and zoomed 1.15. II: Listening • babelcast-zoetrope-2009.12.27 (http://www.flexatone.net/video/m4v/babelcast-zoetrope-2009.12.27.m4v) 1.16. II: The babelcast: Precedents • 1989: Umberto Ecco, The Open Work • Leaving parts of a work to chance • Works that “reject the definitive, concluded message and multiply the formal possibilities of the distribution of their elements” (Eco 1989, p. 3). • 1986: William Gibson, Count Zero • Artificial intelligence that sends randomly constructed human junk, found in space, back down to earth, which is assumed to be forged works of artists Joseph Cornell • American “assemblage” artist Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) • Cornell: Object (Roses des Vents) (1942-53) 81.17. II: The babelcast: Motivations and Meanings • Why do this? • What meaning, if any, is conveyed? 9 © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation / Visual Artistsand Galleries Association, Inc. (VAGA). This content is excluded from ourCreative Commons license. For more information, see