SU290 - Ways To Make Music With Machines
ways to make music with machines:
Record a bunch of sounds to tape then chop them up using musique concrète methods to reassemble them into an iconic theme song from the 60s.
Use giant analog signal generators to pitch and filter audio such that you can re-record the works of Bach and score movies like A Clockwork Orange while becoming a trans icon.
Program a computer to simplify the above while following methods and conventions from western music, i.e. sheet music or 3/4 time signature. Alternately: toss that out the window and focus on recording or simplifying studio work.
Take devices that failed at their intended purpose of substituting for a band member and use them to make acid house.
Take devices that were intended to be general purpose but were programmed by a recent Japanese college grad obsessed with reggae such that their presets are used to give birth to Dancehall halfway across the world in Jamaica.
Lift a preset from a machine, loop it endlessly, and have Del the Funky Homosapien rap over it in your virtual band.
Make a program that generates rhythms based on Euclidean algorithms. (Here’s a free iPhone version.)
Make a program that lets you quickly and easily scroll through algorithmically produced chord progressions with this new fangled device called a “mouse.” Release it in 1986 and update it for the next 20something years before rebuilding it from scratch and rereleasing it just this week. (Here’s an emulation of the original.)
Make a program that does something similar only instead of using a mouse use Conway’s game of life to create progressions with or without your input.
Use machine learning to create an x/y grid that corresponds to a wide array of kick, snare, and hihat drum patterns that are largely pulled from electronic music. Create a machine that lets you scroll through the grid and add/remove beats seamlessly. Open source it because you’re a badass and you care more about building things than making music with them.
Make a machine that produces rhythms based on the moonphase and sell it at-cost with a manual that’s more like a zine than a manual that I can’t find a PDF of anywhere. Have someone make a really funny video featuring wizards and werewolves about it that I wish I’d made.
Make a machine that turns anything you put into it into farts.
Get your mind so blown by all the above that you never make anything.
fun facts:
90% of the people discussed in the above are women or queer whom possibly do not get the recognition they deserve. Their names are Delia Derbyshire, Wendy Carlos, Okuda Hiroko, Laurie Spiegel, and Émilie Gillet.
This particular rabbit hole was partially kicked off by the rerelease of Laurie’s Spiegel’s Music Mouse and a great interview about AI versus algorithmic music that can be read here.
I was up half the night with acid reflux and as such this is late and I may or may not stream more electronic music goofiness tonight. Going to try though - link is still here and time is still 7.
links:
closing thought:
A tool is just a toy you no longer feel precious about.
Sincerely,
John P. Spain
One Day
JohnSpainCo - PO Box 150272 Brooklyn NY 11215