Pi, Artificial Neurons & Physics in Music

The idea of computer-generated music has been around for quite some time now, but the computer is still constantly being used to apply novel ideas to music, reinventing genres and expanding the possibilities of aural artistry in the 21st century.

With affordable improvements in software and hardware, musicians and fans of music alike are exploring creative firsts in songwriting, sometimes resulting in amazing new sounds (and… sometimes not). Regardless, artistic bounds are being pushed in exciting new ways, making 2008 as good a year as any for music, despite the all-but-complete collapse of the music industry…

Below are a couple recent examples of technology applied to creation that I found to be particularly noteworthy.

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John Matthias & The Fragmented Orchestra

Watch a promo video on YouTube about The Fragmented Orchestra

“Musician/physicist John Matthias puts his unlikely dichotomy to work with a new project, The Fragmented Orchestra. Taking 24 artificial neurons that create music from external noises - both natural and instrumental - his sampler is packing artificial intelligence. ‘When stimulated by the musical sounds, [the neurons] will form groups and patterns based on the stimulation and the changing connectivity, which you might just about say, will contain some kind of musical ‘knowledge’,’ he says via email.These neurons will play back the sounds they collectively create to the FACT Gallery in London, where listeners can experience the outcome.

The blending of science and music, as Matthias expects, will give the listener insight as to how music is created in the conscious and unconscious realm. ‘The naturally occurring sounds are very important to the piece, because of the timbers and sonic quality they have, but also because of their natural rhythms.’”-Ben Meredith, URB Magazine (he also played on Radioheads The Bends…)

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Paul Slocum & Making Music with Pi (from NoiseAddicts.com)

“His newest work is on display at Dunn and Brown Contemporary in Dallas and is made up of a vintage (euphemism for “garage sale”) amplifier hooked up to a laptop running software of his own creation.This software is called the “Pi House Generator”, and randomly generates house music using the number π . Much like the number itself, the music stream never repeats and constantly continues to evolve. From Paul:

“The software progressively calculates the sequence of digits in pi, starting at 3.14 and progressing towards infinity. As the program calculates the digits, it feeds the results into an algorithmic music generator containing my structural criteria for house music. The resulting piece of house music is infinitely long and static and never repeats itself.

The number of processor cycles required to calculate pi increase with the number of digits it is calculated to. After months or years of playing the song, any fixed computer hardware will be unable to calculate the digits fast enough for the song to play continuously.

The rate that the number of processor cycles increase per pi-digits is bound by the formula Z*log(N); however based on Moore’s Law, processor power per dollar increases at an exponential rate - doubling every two years. BY upgrading computers regularly with market trends, the song can be played indefinitely.”

“New pi digits are calculated every minute or so, and they are used to choose sample points, sample arrangement, drum samples, and drum patterns. I also use the pi digits to seed a pseudo-random number generator so that I can generate as many random numbers as I need from a pi digit set. Also, some elements are cyclic, like the samples sets used and general arrangement limitations.” “

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(listen to a sample of the stream here)

(the authors of this post also indicated that this software would be made available for download in the future)