Science says: pop music is simplistic

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I think your link is giving me a 404, but I don't speak portugese.

There is also, by the way, darwintunes. I also read about a program that writes music mimicing the styles of other music input -- kind of like a markov chain chatbot, except for music, and (probably) without using a markov model.

[Triple Zero]

Ever checked out http://tones.wolfram.com/ ?

no, will check that out later.



Hm ENKI it really works for me, try it with referrers off?

[NotPublished]

Trip 0, I like this program you wrote. Even though the notes are random, the form is VERY mathmetical, it actually made some nice sounding results. The thing that is achieving unison here is the synth (Or my focus is just retarded, the obvious one would be drum also) .. I think without it, it would sound totally discord ~ though I think after a certain point you can pull it off without the synth.

Of course near the end sometimes it feels the piece was concluded, sometimes it doesn't - but I think to alleviate this, make it more biased into playing the first note that was heard from the instrument (And perhaps throw it in a chord or something) ~ and something that is longer than a 8th or a 16th

What language did you write this in?

[NotPublished]

Hahaha I can't stop listening to it, its kinda growing on me ... It sounds futuristic!

[Triple Zero]

It was C++ with DirectX. It's been a loooooooong time, I dunno if I could do it again (in C++, I mean).

Also all of the sounds you hear are from a synth I wrote the software synthesizer that is generating the waveforms (it doesn't use sampled or recorded sounds) myself as well.

I presume you mean the ... I think they call it a "drone" or a "pad" in synthesizer terms. You get the sound by adding up a bunch of slightly detuned sawtooth waves, makes a nice typical indeed very synthethic filler sound. As well as probably a lowpass resonance filter and some simple reverb (which probably were just one or two echos layered on eachother--much easier than coding an actual reverb).
Um but that has nothing to do with random music generation I could have used MIDI sounds as well, it's just that I love playing around with synthesized sounds and programming weirs effects (as long as they dont require me to write any melodies, I am fine)

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

It worked when I grabbed it with wget. Thanks

http://darwintunes.org/ and http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/experiments.htm are what I was thinking of, btw.

[Telarus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt_tjQSdl30

[NotPublished]

Oh! The way I heard it was in 3 layers

1) Drums
2) Keyboard Synth
3) Electric/Bass Guitar/Another Keyboard

But that is very interesting how you approached the waveforms! That is a pretty smooth synth you wrote there

Are you going to be mucking around with anything in the near future?

[Triple Zero]

There's the drums, which are three layers, one is the hard hitting bits of the bassdrum and "snaredrum" (quotes because synthesizing a proper snaredrum is hard), second is a bunch of random percussive and bass sounds (half of which aren't even based on actual drum instruments, but is just sound stuff I thought would fill out the rhythm). Third is that pretty much constant stream of hihats.
Then there's the keyboard synth, which are the long drawn out "synth" notes, which always play the three (?) "important" notes in the chord.
Then there's the "bassline", which is a random percussive melody of, well, those bwob bwob bwob bassline sounds. I think I coupled the rhythm to correspond a bit with the drumline. It consists of two or three notes from the current chord.
And finally there's the "lead tune", which is the higher pitched keyboard sound. It picks notes from the chord and a few in between that my friend told me would also "work".

This is all from memory btw, my gf is asleep so I can't play it. And the original code is on those old harddisks that I hope still work after the fire, but I don't really have a computer I can plug them in to.

And no, see I used to be a demoscene programmer. Wrote 4096 byte demos. The last one I made actually had a tiny softsynth in it. But I quit the scene in 2000  I just didn't feel like it anymore and went "well it's just a hobby" and quit. [what was actually the cause of this, I am still trying to figure out. Actually I'm desparately trying to get back to that mindstate]

Either way I'm not going to code C++ anymore But that's just because I fell in love with Python :-P Unfortunately Python is not fast enough to do real time sound synthesis.

My current programming projects do not have much to do with sound. There's a Forum-bot I'm trying to write, a thing that tracks and graphs WiFi signals, trying to see if I can train an Echo State Network, some experiments with eyecandy in SVG (the Design Doodles) and an Error Level Analysis tool I read about yesterday that can help determine whether a picture has been shooped or not ... and a whole random bunch of other little tryouts and experiments and doodads.

You?

[NotPublished]

Sounds like you have a good memory let me tell you that. I would love to see what you did, if you ever manage to get the hdd working again. (Maybe if you wrote an library for your synth?)

I hope you get back into it, demoscene can set off massive inspiration in others Do you have any other works?
Though I know how you feel about C++ ...

Damn I like the sound of your projects, especially the WiFi signal one.

I was ment to write a game for the DS (PsychoEx) but me and friend had falling out (Of course things are fixed now), ever since I started doing paid work for Programming I just can't find the motivation to write anything outside of work anymore ~ too lazy now. Just keeping it at PHP atm, working at Car Yard ... Its way too easy (and its consistant) - its keeping me fairly happy

[Triple Zero]

PHP is easy to code, I agree, but it's not consistent IMO. It's lack of consistency is my biggest beef with it in fact Try any other loosely typed dynamic scripting language (ruby, python, perl ..) and you'll see what I mean. Take for example the array functions. About half of them start with array_ and the rest not. Some of them modify the array in place, while others return a new array, and some do both. Similar for the string functions, additionally half of them are named based on equivalent C functions, others have made-up names. The file functions ... etc In case you are interested, stuff is detailed here: http://www.tnx.nl/php.html though that page evangelizes Perl, which is IMO not really the best alternative (cause it's kind of old and therefore has its own fair share of weird quirks, newer languages like ruby and python are much better designed). In fact, really the only reason why PHP is still so popular is because it's a platform you can expect to be present at any random webhost everywhere, which is more a function of market share than the qualities of the language itself. Sorry it's a bit of a peeve of mine

Anyway. I didn't write a library for the synth, cause each instrument is just umm a few lines of C code Srsly once you know how, generating waveforms is not that hard. Kind of fun, like a modular synthesizer such as Buzz Machines, except even more freedom
I did write one VST Effect, if anybody is interested I can upload that. It's called Krush.dll and it does a kind of combo of randomized bitcrushing, lowpass filter and sinusoid waveshaping. I might just one day start writing VST effects again. Whenever I hear an autotuner, I actually want to code one, just to figure out if I can make them work, plus I got some novel ideas on how to do them which may sound more interesting than the done-to-death autotuners that are around these days.

Um, other work. Yes I made four 4K demos:
Design?!, 2nd place Bizarre 1998
Organic, 1st place Ambience 1999
Never Bored, 2nd place TakeOver 1999
Meuk, 2nd place Mekka & Symposium 2000

First one has no sound, second and third use the Adlib chip on your soundcard (real crappy hardware synth nobody uses anymore but is probably still on every soundcard) and the fourth actually uses a software synthesizer that generates the waveforms from various formulas, sawtooths, noise and filters. Unfortunately, because it tries to access the soundcard directly, very low-level, it's also the one that's least likely to run. I programmed all of them to run in DOS/Windows'98 and I don't think I ever got Meuk to run anymore even in Win2K. There is a tool called "DOSBox" I heard some people had success with, but I never got that working either. I did manage to rip just the soundtrack of Meuk, I can upload that later if you're interested.

If you can't find the motivation and want to start coding stuff for fun again, I may suggest learning Python. It really makes things so easy, you can write tiny fun experiments for whatever you can think of in just a few lines of code. XKCD is right on the money with this one: http://xkcd.com/353/

[LMNO]

If entropy as is being discussed in this thread is related to the amount of predictability, then context is essential.

I have a recording of Roland Kirk playing live with Charles Mingus. It was the late 60s, so free jazz was in it's heyday.  The guy is an absolute freak, and is throwing out atonal riffs, shrieks, and other abrasive and harsh tones.

However, this is to be expected.

The set ends with him blowing a low A on his sax.  Surprisingly, this note goes on for about three minutes without stopping.  Because he knows the technique as "circular breathing", he can hold a note far longer than most people would believe possible.

This is very unexpected.

[Mangrove]

"Jazz is the sound of surprise"

[LMNO]

"Jazz is the sound of fapping"

Fixed because I had to.

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

Who the hell would enjoy entropic, unpredictable music?

...anyone who likes Aphex Twin or Venetian Snares?