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I'm looking to tip my toes into making some generative music. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, it is basically music generated by a system (e.g. computer program), where the "musicians" role is to control the parameters that specify the rules by which the system creates music, instead of laying out specific elements of the composition.

Does anyone have recommendations/experience on (preferably free) music making software with generative capabilities? I was specifically thinking of first trying to find a plugin that can modify a loop composed by the user by dropping a certain percentage of notes randomly, something like Brian Eno is using in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv7epY75Wa0 staring around the 13 minute mark (the whole interview is worth watching if you're interested in this sort of stuff, Eno is such a brilliant and charismatic guy!). I guess any synth with a random number generator would get me started, but ideally I'd like to find something with a bit more control and flexibility.

There are various AI apps which can learn, (rather than just random variations),
e.g ... https://freesound.org/forum/off-topic/42521/

https://youtu.be/9wmo6Htaalg?t=518

I have had a go at generative music. I published a long piece on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiIIOHeqFlE&t=69s

This was done using Native Instruments Reaktor, which is a synth-design program. There is a free version of Reaktor available here:

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synths/reaktor-6-player/

I think you can download user-created instruments free and use them in Reaktor Player. As far as I remember all the instruments I used in my YouTube piece were free

They do on this https://www.aiva.ai/

Migfus20 wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Don't you mean ... https://youtu.be/iJgNpm8cTE8?t=151

Timbre wrote:
There are various AI apps which can learn, (rather than just random variations),
e.g ... https://freesound.org/forum/off-topic/42521/

https://youtu.be/9wmo6Htaalg?t=518

This is interesting stuff! Not really sure if it's applicable to what I'm trying to do right now, but something to keep in mind for the future, for sure. Really what I'm looking for are those random variations - within parameters that I set.

Badgie42 wrote:
I have had a go at generative music. I published a long piece on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiIIOHeqFlE&t=69s

This was done using Native Instruments Reaktor, which is a synth-design program. There is a free version of Reaktor available here:

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synths/reaktor-6-player/

I think you can download user-created instruments free and use them in Reaktor Player. As far as I remember all the instruments I used in my YouTube piece were free

Will have to look into Reaktor. I also asked this on reddit, where many people recommended modular synthesis, which I suppose Reaktor also has, but does it have other generative capabilities as well?

I got a lot of recommendations for VCV Rack, which is a free "eurorack simulator" and Pure Data, which is a sort of visual programming language for sound design. If anyone has experience with some combination of those (and Reaktor), what would you say are the pros and cons of each?

Timbre wrote:

Migfus20 wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Don't you mean ... https://youtu.be/iJgNpm8cTE8?t=151

::: D

As someone else has mentioned, the thing that comes to mind for me is NI Reaktor. It's great for this and there is a whole community dedicated to sharing free ensembles created using the platform, where you can find all sorts of fun and interesting stuff. And the beauty of the paid version of Reaktor is that everything is modifiable on the deepest level, so you can actually merge aspects of different instruments together and create a new interface for it if you want to. The possibilities are endless.

The ensemble (instrument/effect unit) within Reaktor that I'm thinking you should check out is called "Newscool" and is based on Conway's game of life, which you've almost certainly familiar with.

Here's an interesting article on Newscool:
http://alijamieson.co.uk/2016/05/25/reaktors-newscool/

Headphaze wrote:
... Conway's game of life ...

If you're looking for musical cellular-automata ... https://youtu.be/k8EfRXihiWg

Timbre wrote:
If you're looking for musical cellular-automata ... https://youtu.be/k8EfRXihiWg

Woah! That takes me back. I remember downloading this onto my iPhone 3GS way back when, hours of fun.

Sometimes I feel It's great to feel artistic without putting in too much effort right.

@SignalsInNoise

Funnily enough, the video that was recommended to me by Youtube after watching the above was a software called Nodal. Never heard of it but it looks pretty neat for generative music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQpJi0AkFBQ

Transition is a brilliant, easy to use and free MIDI VST plugin.
Love it for generative stuff in a DAW environment.
But it's Windows-only.

https://www.codefn42.com/transition/index.html

I would heartily recommend VCV Rack, for macOS, Linux, or Windows.
The only beef I have with it is that the documentation is rather patchy (so to speak). Each plug-in has different authors and they all have different notions of what constitutes a user manual. Some are great, some think that merely naming it after a real-world module is sufficient.
Fortunately, some modules are simple enough to go by trial and error and observing the results.

You also have to figure out which plug-ins to subscribe to in order to find a module (out of 2,664) that will do what you want. See https://library.vcvrack.com
Beware - the more you have, the harder it is to recall how any one module works.

The sequencer modules I've been trying out are:
• Aria Salvatrice: Darius, Modulus Salomonis Regis (4-step and 8-step versions), Modulissimus Salomonis Regis (16 steps).
• Impromptu: PROBKEY
• Sha#Bang: Stochastic Sequencer, Stoch Seq4, Cosmosis, Neutrinode
• Count Modula: Clocked Random Gates, Euclidean Sequencer
• Audible Instruments: Bernoulli Gate (suitable for those randomly dropped clock pulses)
• HetrickCV: Dust
• ML Modules: Counter (can be programmed by a random CV to produce random-length intervals between output pulses. Daisy-chain several of them for even more fun.)

The "Modulus Salomonis Regis" and "Modulissimus Salomonis Regis" modules are of interest to me because you can make internal patches that reprogram either the current step or others to different quantized notes every time it steps through the sequence.
This is one of my early efforts using them - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YJPQgCTRaM (The wiggly cords and sudden darkening are simply fun visual effects.)
The first time through the 16-step sequencer they're all set to C4, then they go up or down by 1, 2, or 3 notes or single octaves.

-John-

Headphaze wrote:
As someone else has mentioned, the thing that comes to mind for me is NI Reaktor. It's great for this and there is a whole community dedicated to sharing free ensembles created using the platform, where you can find all sorts of fun and interesting stuff. And the beauty of the paid version of Reaktor is that everything is modifiable on the deepest level, so you can actually merge aspects of different instruments together and create a new interface for it if you want to. The possibilities are endless.

The ensemble (instrument/effect unit) within Reaktor that I'm thinking you should check out is called "Newscool" and is based on Conway's game of life, which you've almost certainly familiar with.

Here's an interesting article on Newscool:
http://alijamieson.co.uk/2016/05/25/reaktors-newscool/

Cool news (sorry for the pun, couldn't help myself)!

I find the game of life and similar "emergent behaviour" -systems endlessly fascinating. This actually got me thinking that trying to represent various such systems in musical form would be a very interesting project. Maybe I'll take that on one day when I've familiarized myself with some of these tools!

cabled_mess wrote:
Transition is a brilliant, easy to use and free MIDI VST plugin.
Love it for generative stuff in a DAW environment.
But it's Windows-only.

https://www.codefn42.com/transition/index.html

Thanks for the suggestion, this actually looks like it would be relatively easy to get started with. Good thing I'm a windows user!

Planish wrote:
I would heartily recommend VCV Rack, for macOS, Linux, or Windows.
The only beef I have with it is that the documentation is rather patchy (so to speak). Each plug-in has different authors and they all have different notions of what constitutes a user manual. Some are great, some think that merely naming it after a real-world module is sufficient.
Fortunately, some modules are simple enough to go by trial and error and observing the results.

You also have to figure out which plug-ins to subscribe to in order to find a module (out of 2,664) that will do what you want. See https://library.vcvrack.com
Beware - the more you have, the harder it is to recall how any one module works.

The sequencer modules I've been trying out are:
• Aria Salvatrice: Darius, Modulus Salomonis Regis (4-step and 8-step versions), Modulissimus Salomonis Regis (16 steps).
• Impromptu: PROBKEY
• Sha#Bang: Stochastic Sequencer, Stoch Seq4, Cosmosis, Neutrinode
• Count Modula: Clocked Random Gates, Euclidean Sequencer
• Audible Instruments: Bernoulli Gate (suitable for those randomly dropped clock pulses)
• HetrickCV: Dust
• ML Modules: Counter (can be programmed by a random CV to produce random-length intervals between output pulses. Daisy-chain several of them for even more fun.)

The "Modulus Salomonis Regis" and "Modulissimus Salomonis Regis" modules are of interest to me because you can make internal patches that reprogram either the current step or others to different quantized notes every time it steps through the sequence.
This is one of my early efforts using them - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YJPQgCTRaM (The wiggly cords and sudden darkening are simply fun visual effects.)
The first time through the 16-step sequencer they're all set to C4, then they go up or down by 1, 2, or 3 notes or single octaves.

-John-

Yeah, I've heard good things about VCV Rack. Nice demo as well, good to see these sort of ideas implemented in practice.

I've been hearing about VCV Rack for a long time, but it's great to be reminded of it once again here and even write some proven modules that I personally didn't know about. Generally speaking of music production and cool synths, does anyone have any experience with the Animoog Galaxy? It's probably not as widespread at least because it's software for Apple Vision Pro. Here https://faqaudio.com/ , by the way, I saw one of the discussions where you can see a video on how to create music with the device. I'm sure real experts and musicians will consider it all bliss, but it's at least interesting to try.