Generated Music Grows Up

24 Sep

Computer generated music is the ugly stepchild of Richard Wagner. The Commodore 64 home computer had a programmable sound chip that allowed for machine language coding via PEEK and POKE instructions that would define the Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release (ADSR) waveform. This little 6581 chip with prodding by teenage geeks like myself unleashed electronic sound generation into the wild and woolly world. With limited musical talent, I could create a cacophony of blips and bleeps that could delight only a ladybug under the sole of a shoe.

Fast forward to modern day source code repositories with tools like SuperCollider that allow for probabilistic scoring. “I’ll take three pints of Jay-Z, a pinch of Bach and fold in a chorus of the boys choir of Harlem.” Digitize an MRI, PET or CT scan, write a few matrix transformations and listen to the tune. It may sing “Free At Last” or drum out a sorrowful dirge. The outcome is difficult to predict. Cheers to researchers bending the rules and to folks like us that give them wings to fly!

Further Reading

One Response to “Generated Music Grows Up”

  1. Precision Engineering pretoria October 3, 2012 at 3:31 pm #

    Thanks designed for sharing such a pleasant idea, piece of writing is good, thats why i have read it completely

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