There's a nice website with a clean UI called 'Music for programming', put together by a guy who curates playlists designed to compliment anyone who wants to buckle down and do deep focus creative work for a while. I've been through each of his 53 playlists several times. 'Asiatsana' is one track in one playlist, but the music overall is very much in keeping with the mood and tone of Asiatsana.
The curator of Music For Programming [0] (which is fantastic, yes!) also put together the very silly collection of mixes called Businessfunk [1], which are also great coding music.
And if you try Businessfunk and decide you have the stomach for it, I recommend following up with the Komputer Cast mixes by Com Truise.
Such a well curated list. I listen to it all the time at work.
I was already intimately familiar with many of the artists featured (Aphex twin, oneohtrix point never, tim hecker) but have definitely discovered some new ones through it too.
To piggy-back off this, the record label Silent Season is full of great ambient/downtempo/spacey music for programming. Was listening to this today: https://shop.silentseason.com/album/the-waves
For musicians and devs, it's a good hint that Markov chains are "good enough" for most interesting music applications, ML/AI doesn't typically yield better results. Happy to see this on the front page!
I don't disagree with this observation, but I wanted to mention a counterpoint.
Eno's "Music for Airports" famously uses a system of multiple tape loops that produce sequences of different periods. As you listen, you can hear phrases that occur nearly together and then later, well-separated in time, as the periods of these loops go in and out of phase:
"One of the notes repeats every 23 1/2 seconds. It is in fact a long loop running around a series of tubular aluminum chairs in Conny Plank's studio. The next lowest loop repeats every 25 7/8 seconds or something like that. The third one every 29 15/16 seconds or something. What I mean is they all repeat in cycles that are called incommensurable — they are not likely to come back into sync again."
This interaction of periods will have long memory. (If the tape lengths are L and L+d, for small d, then the repeat time could easily be as long as L*(L/d), and even longer if d does not divide L evenly.) Thus, it is very different from what you get with a Markov chain.
Hm, it works well for this particular song/the genre of generative music but it easily hits limits with many other types of music people might want to work with.
More advanced ML/AI techniques are needed to reason about sound in a semantic/latent space, which a stock Markov model will not do.
I feel like the Markov chain could also apply go higher level song formula, with probability weights for choruses, verses, bridges, breakdowns, solos, etc.
I prefer to just write a bunch of riffs and see where they grow organically, but it seems the chain would be a great tool to piece some of those ideas together or give an indicator of where they could go when a creative block is hit.
I feel like that album has a lot of potential for generative experiments. Admittedly, the album has an over-arching tone of eeriness throughout, which isn't something I want to listen to while I work most days. Maybe it would be inspiring to game developers working in the horror genre :)
Actually, speaking of games with Aphex Twin's music, I'm not sure how many folks here recall the Dreamcast classic 'Rez' - a synesthesic, psychedelic rail-shooter which actually featured a track of his, under his legal name 'Richard D. James'.
If you guys haven't played it, seriously give it a shot. I believe there is a re-released version on XBOX and PC, though I can't speak to the quality of the ports, as I still play my Dreamcast almost daily. ;)
One thing I like to do is combine the tracks from each disc, so I listen to order like track 1, 13, 2, 14, etc. Most of the beginning tracks are less creepy.
As mentioned in that article, the eeriness comes from him creating the album through lucid dreaming, allegedly. Here's the original interview about that, its pretty fascinating:
Interview with David Toop, March 1994, The Face
Broaching this subject of dreams, he becomes animated and talks a long streak. "This album is really specific," he says, "because 70 percent of it is done from lucid dreaming... To have lucid dreams is to be conscious of being in a dream state, even to be capable of directing the action while still in a dream. I've been able to do it since I was little," Richard explains. "I taught myself how to do it and it's my most precious thing. Through the years, I've done everything that you can do, including talking and shagging with anyone you feel that takes your fancy. The only thing I haven't done is tried to kill myself. That's a bit shady. You probably wouldn't wake up, and you wouldn't know if it had worked, anyway. Or maybe you would.
"I often throw myself off skyscrapers or cliffs and zoom off right at the last minute That's quite good fun. It's well realistic. Eating food is quite smart. Like tasting food. Smells as well. I make foods up and sometimes they don't taste of anything—like they taste of some weird mish-mash of other things."
...
"About a year and a half ago," he says, "I badly wanted to dream tracks. Like imagine I'm in the studio and write a track in my sleep, wake up and then write it in the real world with real instruments. I couldn't do it at first. The main problem was just remembering it. Melodies were easy to remember. I'd go to sleep in my studio. I'd go to sleep for ten minutes and write three tracks - only small segments, not l00 percent finished tracks. I'd wake up and I'd only been asleep for ten minutes. That's quite mental.
"I vary the way I do it, dreaming either I'm in my studio, entirely the way it is, or all kinds of variations. The hardest thing is getting the sounds the same. It's never the same. It doesn't really come close to it. When you have a nightmare or a weird dream, you wake up and tell someone about it and it sounds really shit. It's the same for sounds, roughly. When I imagine sounds, they are in dream form. As you get better at doing it, you can get closer and closer to the actual sounds. But that's only 70 percent of it."
> Admittedly, the album has an over-arching tone of eeriness throughout, which isn't something I want to listen to while I work most days.
I think it may have to do with me being ADHD, but I actually like ambient music with a little bit of a stressful edge to it. It gives me a little bit of urgency and controlled stress seems to be my best motivator.
Thanks for writing this and spending the time to break down and explain how you did it.
I’m not the biggest apex twin fan, but I’ve followed him for a few decades and always liked his visual and audio tricks mixed into his music. I feel like he would enjoy the idea of an infinite track and hope he responds somehow.
Are there any file formats that allow generative music so I can download this and play in a non-internet connected situation?
generative.fm is a progressive web app, so it _should_ work offline with the caveat that you'll need to play a piece once online before it works offline. I'm working on getting this communicated through the site but just haven't gotten around to it yet.
In knowing the original track very well, I find this version fascinating but also frustrating to listen to. It really emphasizes for me the importance of well thought out note placement and timing and the connection throughout, especially in minimalist pieces. This might sound pompous, but it's like the original seeks to tell a story, but this version is like pulling words and phrases out of a hat; the emotional payoff doesn't exist for me. I hope that's not discouraging in any way, as I think this type of experimentation should be celebrated and the writeup is excellent. I'm only speaking of what effect this has on me tied to this particular piece of music.
I know what you mean and I don't find it discouraging at all. Your analogy is perfect. The way the original piece evolves and builds on its phrases over time is very noticeably lacking in the generative version. In my version, any emotional buildup from one phrase to the next can only happen in short spurts at best, and it happens completely by accident. Of course, if I was putting on music that I wanted to really focus on and enjoy, the original would always be my choice. For me, the appeal of an endless version was that I could turn the music into ignorable ambience for my environment. Since we're making analogies, to me it's a bit like seeing a painting you like and saying "Gosh I like that color," then painting your walls that color. It can't compare to the painting but it might remind you of it.
Came here to say this. The generative version has no story, so the emotional aspect is quite watered down, even if the general mood persists. Funnily enough, that is probably perfect for the use case of this kind of thing: background music.
Given that the way the phrases evolve, and also repeat, is what tells the story, maybe a second layer of markov chain driving the phrase choices would help?
The story can only come from understanding the piece. The understanding requires a deeper knowledge. Interesting that it lacks 'emotional intelligence' - is that something which can also be learnt?
Doom from 2016 had this really cool feature in it where the music was procedurally adaptive based on the context of the game. When you were getting into a battle the music would mutate and become a lot more aggressive. Small fights would be different from big hairy fights. Ending a fight on low health would be different from leaving it unscathed.
For long time I've always thought it would be great to have something that had a similar effect based on text input speed.
Situations like getting into a massive battle, or leaving a battle with low health would have the music mutate to
Generative music comes full circle. This side of Aphex Twin is more or less directly inspired by Brian Eno's Music for Aiports. Which itself comes out of Eno's generative music experiments.
Are you sure it was so insprired? Early IDM artists have sometimes admitted never hearing their forebears (Stockhausen, Steve Reich, etc.); they just reached similar concerns independently by noodling with electronics.
And you could argue Eno's proceduralism was influenced by Cage, and Cage's proceduralism from Nancarrow... and on and on the family graph of influence goes. Not sure where the full circle is, but there's plenty of thread to tug on here.
Although I like the result, I find the track less soothing without the birds in the background. There's probably a way to generate those as well though, I suppose.
Agreed. I considered adding birds to it but I've found if I play this track in the morning and open my window so I can hear actual birds it's a nice experience.
There are a number of languages / environments to help with the creation of generative music under the umbrella term 'live coding' - the community also tries to keep the performance aspects of music intact.
As if aisatsana was not beautiful enough, it was first performed in London's Barbican Centre in 2012, on a suspended grand piano, swinging in the air !
Generative.fm was shared here last week, spawning a number of interesting discussions. If you enjoy the comments here, I suggest checking out that thread.
I find that perfectly quantized tracks sound artificial over time. Not sure how close “aisatsana” sticks to perfectly on-(half)-beat, but adding slightly random quantization offsets to each generated note could be interesting to lend the results a more "natural" sound
Nice! Simple, but works out super nicely :) Even the occasional odd note doesn't seem too out of place, since the phrases are short and "self-contained".
I also enjoyed the rest of the pieces on generative.fm, they all have a specific "character" which is quite rare. Nice work!
[+] [-] Fricken|7 years ago|reply
https://musicforprogramming.net/?fortyfive
[+] [-] spiralganglion|7 years ago|reply
And if you try Businessfunk and decide you have the stomach for it, I recommend following up with the Komputer Cast mixes by Com Truise.
[0] https://musicforprogramming.net [1] http://datassette.net/businessfunk/ [2] http://comtruise.com/kc/
[+] [-] dukoid|7 years ago|reply
These three bands work well for me when coding (or just "space ambient" on youtube):
- AES Dana: https://ultimae.bandcamp.com/album/perimeters
- Carbon Based Life Forms https://carbonbasedlifeforms.bandcamp.com/album/hydroponic-g...
- Solar Fields: https://solarfields.bandcamp.com/album/movements-remastered
[+] [-] minism|7 years ago|reply
I was already intimately familiar with many of the artists featured (Aphex twin, oneohtrix point never, tim hecker) but have definitely discovered some new ones through it too.
[+] [-] H1Supreme|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foobarqwertz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neonhomer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatok|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dijksterhuis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haywirez|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mturmon|7 years ago|reply
Eno's "Music for Airports" famously uses a system of multiple tape loops that produce sequences of different periods. As you listen, you can hear phrases that occur nearly together and then later, well-separated in time, as the periods of these loops go in and out of phase:
"One of the notes repeats every 23 1/2 seconds. It is in fact a long loop running around a series of tubular aluminum chairs in Conny Plank's studio. The next lowest loop repeats every 25 7/8 seconds or something like that. The third one every 29 15/16 seconds or something. What I mean is they all repeat in cycles that are called incommensurable — they are not likely to come back into sync again."
This interaction of periods will have long memory. (If the tape lengths are L and L+d, for small d, then the repeat time could easily be as long as L*(L/d), and even longer if d does not divide L evenly.) Thus, it is very different from what you get with a Markov chain.
[+] [-] ssalazar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] droobles|7 years ago|reply
I prefer to just write a bunch of riffs and see where they grow organically, but it seems the chain would be a great tool to piece some of those ideas together or give an indicator of where they could go when a creative block is hit.
[+] [-] cauthon|7 years ago|reply
Are Markov chains not considered ML/AI? I would consider them to be a standard part of the field
[+] [-] glitcher|7 years ago|reply
https://www.residentadvisor.net/reviews/23648
I feel like that album has a lot of potential for generative experiments. Admittedly, the album has an over-arching tone of eeriness throughout, which isn't something I want to listen to while I work most days. Maybe it would be inspiring to game developers working in the horror genre :)
[+] [-] lostgame|7 years ago|reply
If you guys haven't played it, seriously give it a shot. I believe there is a re-released version on XBOX and PC, though I can't speak to the quality of the ports, as I still play my Dreamcast almost daily. ;)
[+] [-] neonhomer|7 years ago|reply
Also there is a "missing" 19 track you can preview on his site: https://aphextwin.warp.net/release/68148-aphex-twin-selected....
[+] [-] codeulike|7 years ago|reply
Interview with David Toop, March 1994, The Face
Broaching this subject of dreams, he becomes animated and talks a long streak. "This album is really specific," he says, "because 70 percent of it is done from lucid dreaming... To have lucid dreams is to be conscious of being in a dream state, even to be capable of directing the action while still in a dream. I've been able to do it since I was little," Richard explains. "I taught myself how to do it and it's my most precious thing. Through the years, I've done everything that you can do, including talking and shagging with anyone you feel that takes your fancy. The only thing I haven't done is tried to kill myself. That's a bit shady. You probably wouldn't wake up, and you wouldn't know if it had worked, anyway. Or maybe you would.
"I often throw myself off skyscrapers or cliffs and zoom off right at the last minute That's quite good fun. It's well realistic. Eating food is quite smart. Like tasting food. Smells as well. I make foods up and sometimes they don't taste of anything—like they taste of some weird mish-mash of other things."
...
"About a year and a half ago," he says, "I badly wanted to dream tracks. Like imagine I'm in the studio and write a track in my sleep, wake up and then write it in the real world with real instruments. I couldn't do it at first. The main problem was just remembering it. Melodies were easy to remember. I'd go to sleep in my studio. I'd go to sleep for ten minutes and write three tracks - only small segments, not l00 percent finished tracks. I'd wake up and I'd only been asleep for ten minutes. That's quite mental.
"I vary the way I do it, dreaming either I'm in my studio, entirely the way it is, or all kinds of variations. The hardest thing is getting the sounds the same. It's never the same. It doesn't really come close to it. When you have a nightmare or a weird dream, you wake up and tell someone about it and it sounds really shit. It's the same for sounds, roughly. When I imagine sounds, they are in dream form. As you get better at doing it, you can get closer and closer to the actual sounds. But that's only 70 percent of it."
[+] [-] yonaguska|7 years ago|reply
I think it may have to do with me being ADHD, but I actually like ambient music with a little bit of a stressful edge to it. It gives me a little bit of urgency and controlled stress seems to be my best motivator.
[+] [-] fb03|7 years ago|reply
The author has created a js library which you can use to play .sunvox files in it, it is pretty nice too.
http://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/jsplay/
try 'machine 005'. I've been using it for coding lately.
[+] [-] IggleSniggle|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Graham24|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prepend|7 years ago|reply
I’m not the biggest apex twin fan, but I’ve followed him for a few decades and always liked his visual and audio tricks mixed into his music. I feel like he would enjoy the idea of an infinite track and hope he responds somehow.
Are there any file formats that allow generative music so I can download this and play in a non-internet connected situation?
[+] [-] alexbainter|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joombaga|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spacemadness|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexbainter|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afro88|7 years ago|reply
Given that the way the phrases evolve, and also repeat, is what tells the story, maybe a second layer of markov chain driving the phrase choices would help?
[+] [-] budgi4|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jaepa|7 years ago|reply
For long time I've always thought it would be great to have something that had a similar effect based on text input speed.
Situations like getting into a massive battle, or leaving a battle with low health would have the music mutate to
[+] [-] fpgaminer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] na85|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pimeys|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NelsonMinar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mediterraneo10|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spiralganglion|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] alexbainter|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmahle|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pt_|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] xtagon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jxdxbx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yaw|7 years ago|reply
Lots of great starting points at: https://github.com/toplap/awesome-livecoding
[+] [-] vool|7 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJHsT8kEyzs
[+] [-] jugg1es|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xitrium|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spiralganglion|7 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19397817
[+] [-] chaseha|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theon144|7 years ago|reply
I also enjoyed the rest of the pieces on generative.fm, they all have a specific "character" which is quite rare. Nice work!