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GENERATIVE MUSIC
Conceptual Background
GENERATIVE MUSIC DEFINED
• Key
phrases from 4 unsatisfactory definitions found on Wikipedia:
• composed
from analytic theories so explicit as to generate
structurally coherent material
• generated
by a system component with no inputs
• generated
by processes that are designed and/or initiated by the
composer
• non-deterministic
— cannot be repeated
GENERATIVE MUSIC DEFINED
• My
working definition:
• indeterminate
music played through interaction between one or
more persons and a more or less predetermined system, such that
the player(s) control some — but not all — performance
parameters
GENERATIVE MUSIC DEFINED
• indeterminate
• played
through interaction
• between
• and
• such
• but
music
one or more persons
a (more or less) predetermined system,
that the player(s) control some —
not all —
• performance
parameters
GENERATIVE MUSIC DEFINED
• planting
a seed, not engineering a tree
— Brian Eno
PRECEDENTS
• Pauline
Oliveros — Tuning Meditation
• Steve
Reich — early tape phase pieces
• Alvin
Lucier — I Am Sitting in a Room
• Brian
Eno — Discreet Music
PAULINE OLIVEROS:TUNING MEDITATION
•
Take a deep breath and let it all the way out with air sound. Listen with your mind's ear for a
tone.
•
On the next breath using any vowel sound, sing the tone that you have silently perceived on one
comfortable breath.
•
Listen to the whole field of sound the group is making. Select a voice distant from you and tune
as exactly as possible to the tone you are hearing from that voice.
•
Listen again to the whole field of sound the group is making. Contribute by singing a new tone
that no one else is singing.
•
Continue by listening then singing a tone of your own or tuning to the tone of another voice
alternately.
Commentary:
•
Always keep the same tone for any single breath. Change to a new tone on another breath.
•
Listen for distant partners for tuning.
•
Sound your new tone so that it may be heard distantly.
•
Communicate with as many different voices as possible.
•
Sing warmly!
STEVE REICH: COME OUT
• I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening
throughout the sounding music.
• To facilitate closely detailed listening a musical process should happen extremely gradually.
• Performing and listening to a gradual musical process resembles:
• pulling back a swing, releasing it, and observing it gradually come to rest;
• turning over an hour glass and watching the sand slowly run through the bottom;
• placing your feet in the sand by the ocean's edge and watching, feeling, and listening to the waves
gradually bury them.
• Though I may have the pleasure of discovering musical processes and composing the musical
material to run through them, once the process is set up and loaded it runs by itself.
• As to whether a musical process is realized through live human performance or through some
electro-mechanical means is not finally the main issue.
— from “Music as a Gradual Process”
ALVIN LUCIER: I AM SITTING IN A ROOM
(for voice and electromagnetic tape, 1969)
Necessary Equipment: One microphone, two tape recorders, amplifier, and one loudspeaker.
Choose a room the musical qualities of which you would like to evoke. Attach the microphone to the input of
tape recorder #1. To the output of tape recorder #2 attach the amplifier and loudspeaker. Use the following
text or any other text of any length:
“I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now.....”
Record your voice on tape through the microphone attached to tape recording #1. Rewind the tape to its
beginning, transfer it to tape recorder #2, play it back into the room through the loudspeaker and record a
second generation of the original recorder statement through the microphone attached to tape recorder #1.
Rewind the second generation to its beginning and splice it onto the end of the original recorder statement on
tape recorder #2. Play the second generation only back into the room through the loudspeaker and record a
third generation of the original recorded statement through the microphone attached to the tape recorder #1.
Continue this process through many generations.
All the generations spliced together in chronological order make a tape composition the length of which is
determined by the length of the original statement and the number of generations recorded. Make versions in
which one recorded statement is recycled trough many rooms. Make versions using one or more speakers of
different languages in different rooms. Make versions in which, for each generation, the microphone is moved to
different parts of the room or rooms. Make versions that can be performed in real time.
BRIAN ENO: DISCREET MUSIC
Since I have always preferred making plans to executing them, I have gravitated towards situations
and systems that, once set into operation, could create music with little or no intervention on my
part.That is to say, I tend towards the roles of the planner and programmer, and then become an
audience to the results.
"Discreet Music" is a technological approach to the problem. If there is any score for the piece, it
must be the operational diagram of the particular apparatus I used for its production.The key
configuration here is the long delay echo system.... Having set up this apparatus, my degree of
participation in what it subsequently did was limited to (a) providing an input (in this case, two
simple and mutually compatible melodic lines of different duration stored on a digital recall system)
and (b) occasionally altering the timbre of the synthesizer's output by means of a graphic equalizer.
It is a point of discipline to accept this passive role, and for once, to ignore the tendency to play the
artist by dabbling and interfering. In this case, I was aided by the idea that what I was making was
simply a background for my friend Robert Fripp to play over in a series of concerts we had
planned.This notion of its future utility, coupled with my own pleasure in "gradual processes"
prevented me from attempting to create surprises and less than predictable changes in the piece. I
was trying to make a piece that could be listened to and yet could be ignored... perhaps in the
spirit of Satie who wanted to make music that could "mingle with the sound of the knives and forks
at dinner."
— from liner notes to Discreet Music, 1973.
METHODS
• repetition
with difference
• microtemporal
variance (frequency, pitch)
• macrotemporal
variance (rhythm, tempo)
• chaotic
variance
• reflexive
variance (evolution)
THANK YOU
John Priestley Doctoral Student Media Art & Text VCU
johnpriestley.net