Generative music

Generative music is music that emerges randomly through conditions created by the composer.

Music

Wind chimes are an example of generative music.

With generative music, the artist defines the input, structure and limitations of the system rather than the result. Brian Eno gave the example of wind chimes: the creator of the chimes determines their number, pitches and material, but how and when they strike is determined randomly by the wind. The creator did not compose the music, but instead built the system from which music emerges. In 2001, Eno said: "Ordinary music is like engineering, where everything's built according to a plan, and it's the same every time you play it. Generative music is more like gardening; you plant a seed, and it grows different every time you plant."

History

In 1995 whilst working with SSEYO's Koan software (built by Tim Cole and Pete Cole who later evolved it to Noatikl then Wotja), Eno coined the term "generative music". The term has since gone on to be used to refer to a wide range of music, from entirely random music mixes created by multiple simultaneous CD playback, through to live rule-based computer composition.

Koan was SSEYO's first real-time music generation system, developed for the Windows platform. Work on Koan was started in 1990, and the software was first released to the public in 1994. In 1995 Brian Eno started working with SSEYO's Koan Pro software, work which led to the 1996 publication of his title 'Generative Music 1 with SSEYO Koan Software'.

Eno's early relationship with SSEYO Koan and Intermorphic co-founder Tim Cole was captured and published in his 1995 diary A Year with Swollen Appendices.

Theory

There are four primary perspectives on generative music (Wooller, R. et al., 2005) (reproduced with permission):

Linguistic/structural

Music composed from analytic theories that are so explicit as to be able to generate structurally coherent material (Loy and Abbott 1985; Cope 1991). This perspective has its roots in the generative grammars of language (Chomsky 1956) and music (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983), which generate material with a recursive tree structure.

Interactive/behavioural

Music generated by a system component that has no discernible musical inputs. That is, "not transformational" (Rowe 1991; Lippe 1997:34; Winkler 1998). The Wotja software by Intermorphic, and the Koan software by SSEYO used by Brian Eno to create Generative Music 1, are both examples of this approach.

Creative/procedural

Music generated by processes that are designed and/or initiated by the composer. Steve Reich's It's Gonna Rain and Terry Riley's In C are examples of this (Eno 1996).

Biological/emergent

Non-deterministic music (Biles 2002), or music that cannot be repeated, for example, ordinary wind chimes (Dorin 2001). This perspective comes from the broader generative art movement. This revolves around the idea that music, or sounds may be "generated" by a musician "farming" parameters within an ecology, such that the ecology will perpetually produce different variation based on the parameters and algorithms used. An example of this technique is Joseph Nechvatal's Viral symphOny: a collaborative electronic noise music symphony created between the years 2006 and 2008 using custom artificial life software based on a viral model.

See also

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 Klein, Ezra (2025-10-03). "A breath of fresh air with Brian Eno". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2026-10-28.
  2. ↑ Shachtman, Noah (2001-10-27). "New Eno music gets 'generative'". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2026-10-28.
  3. ↑ Holmes, Thom (2020). "Chapter 15: Contemporary practices in composing electronic music". Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music and Culture (6th ed.). Routledge. ISBN 9781138365469.
  4. ↑ Observatori 2008: After The Future, p. 80
  5. ↑ Joseph Nechvatal Interview: see end for mention of viral symphOny

References