I was always intrigued by the idea of generating music since the late 80's. I'll post a few examples, If anyone's interested. Generators tend to create artificial, random-like, repetitive patterns that do not sound like music performed by a human player.I want to avoid the typical flaws and shortcomings of generators: The only reason generators are not yet implemented for Synfire is that I didn't yet find the final solution to make them better than anything else out there. Generators tend to create patterns that, after some time of getting used to, all seem to sound the same.While that is ok for some electronic styles, it does not help much for all the other styles out there. That's because the underlying mechanics are recognized by the listener. Generators are specific to a particular style or purpose.Cognitone would probably be asked to provide a new generator every month or so. It is difficult to make a generator that can adapt to ANY style and ANY purpose. If the user could code this style and purpose ia scripts, that would be perfect. I want generators that can learn from examples and imitate a particular style you feed them. I've done a lot of research in these directions already and am really looking forward to working on this again. Generating melodies with machines is also something I am very interested in. In the early 70's I used several analog modular sequencers with switching logic modules, (jump between 3 layers of a 16 stage sequencer and also a 3 X 8 sequencer, plus using Sample/Hold modules) (ARP 2500, 2600, MOOG and ARIES modular synthesizers). I also had access to the first EMS digital sequencer, and a custom built 4 x 128 steps by Bob Moog himself, for UMass, Boston. It was a torturous affair, you would play one note on keyboard, toggle a switch, then advance sequencer to the next step. You had to do this for each note, and then again for each layer. It would take an hour or more to fill the sequencer, patchchord it to the proper modules. But one day I came up with this beautiful, delicate melody, that sounded like someone actually played it. I also tried a couple of computer music generation programs that ran on a Mainframe that was 75 miles away in Amherst, MA. I even wrote a crude melodic generation program (in basic and Fortran). I found one of Joseph Shillenger's books in a Boston Library. I kept it and studied it for months, and tried to emulate his work. At that point, the melodies were too robotic sounding. In fact Berklee music at one point had a class or two making use of his research. I found the "Shilllenger system of music" very interesting, but it was tvery technical, and I had a hard time grasping it and ultimately found this was not the vein of music I wanted to work in. There was also this 'proper computer generated music by colleges', Wendy Carlos, and then the the kids who heard the Who's first sequencing work on one of their albums. You had to be in one of those camps, certainly the college professors, looked down on the crass attempts of rock bands using machine generated music parts. I must also confess, I've been using Band In A Box for over 20 years. But it can and does sometimes come up with interesting melodies.
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