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Generative Apps (for ambient music) ?
Hello,
I'm pretty new to iOS for music, so forgive me if I'm missing some obvious things.
As an ambient music creator, I'm looking for suggestions / recommendations for apps for creating generative musics, in the style of Brian Eno's 'Thursday Afternoon' album (and similar ? ) So far 'Xynthesizer' is the most promising thing I've looked at, but being new, I'm sure there's lots of other things I'm not aware of.
cheers !
Comments
A synth will be Mitosynth, or animoog as a controller Gestrument, or try Sliver
How about Mixtikl, Noatikl, DroneFX, Droneo?
Scape, bloom, quincy, xynthesizr
Thesys is a synth and midi controller that lets you set the loop length for the individual channels (pitch, velocity, gate, etc) so you can set the loops at different lengths and get a continuously changing composition.
VirtualANS
I haven't tried it but "Quincy" does a Conway's Game of Life thing like Xynthesizr.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quincy/id726270481?mt=8&uo=4&at=10l4Ky&ct=forum
As mentioned by WMWM, there's a 'generative/scape’ app by Brian Eno in the store https://itunes.apple.com/app/scape/id506703636
Personally I enjoy using NodeBeat to trigger other synths
https://itunes.apple.com/app/nodebeat-hd/id430218329
Caelestis, too.
Mixtikl ---> Asplode
Good suggestions here that will keep you busy for a long time.
Really though, any DAW that will allow you to loop tracks of different lengths will give you the tools Eno used to make Thursday Afternoon (and Music For Airports and Discreet Music and...). They were all made of smallish recorded snippets of music of different lengths set to loop. As they looped, they 'generated' new music because they were never back in sync. Those work sort of the way poly-rhythms work but the tracks weren't even the same tempo. So, whereas poly-rhythms usually find the 'one' again after a bit, the tracks that make up Music for Airports would (supposedly) never sync again for 27 years or something.
Eno got interested in computer based 'generative music' and the Conway game of life stuff around the turn of the 90s but all of his generative music before that point was actually him or his friends creating bits of music and letting them run out of sync. And, in my opinion anyway, all of his pre-90s generative music is a lot more musical/interesting/good.
Plus, it's just 100 times cooler to envision 6 tape machines with long tape loops strung around his house and around kitchen chairs and stuff in order to make the loops long enough.
Cooler than clicking 'generate' that is.
I know Auria and Beatmaker 2 will let you loop bits of any arbitrary length per track. Feed those loops with whatever sonic material you like. MTD will too but looping is a bit of a pain compared to those two. NanoStudio really wants you to quantize to bars so not really a good option. Cubasis or MultiTrackStudio... not sure as I don't own them.
Auria is the spendiest of the bunch but also comes with the possibility of using some of the most interesting 'sonic treatment' (another Enoism) tools on iOS via the FabFilter plugins.
/two long winded eno loving cents
@1P18 said:
Thinking about this more, the generative possibilities with Thesys are staggering, because you can also create separate patterns and string those patterns together, playing each pattern back a certain number of times before it moves on to the next pattern.
Then on top of all that each pattern can use it's own scale, and you can set each channel to play back randomly... And you can set it to play individual notes or chords, and finally you can also set it to play random major and minor chords.
Not a mathmetician, but it appears infinite.
@syrupcore Auria lets you loop tracks individually?! Did not even know that.
That makes two of us.
Noatikl Mixtikl
Xynthesizr (AWESOME!!)
Sound Cells, Node Beat, Kenetic
Dot Melody (Awesome also)
Qunicy, and another Game of life app Runxt Life (a little fiddly but good)
Drones and glitches
Ellipsynth and Droneo
DrOM and Noisemusick
Also try Bitwiz and GlitchMachine (although not really generative)
MidiSequencer and Thesys also have randomize functions and well as Egoist...
@syrupcore Are you sure BM2 will let you set different loop lengths concurrently? Not sure 'bout that...
@syrupcore Loved that post. Tell me it's all true. Specially the Auria looping lengths thingie. Sure I'm missing something obvious. Just been brainwashed by the single 'loop to selection' goodness for too long...
EDIT: And also and by the way I see Feed has just been updated. Not seen with how or what, but when you're feeling like getting down with the Buddha this little guy can take you there also...
@Tarekith said:
Make that three!
Though not a generative app by nature, WOPR is a synth that provides Conway Game of Life for synthesis.
I think what sy ment was that you can make a loop of any length on each tack independant from time and duplicate those loops with ease...per track, but i liked the imagry.
Thought as much. Darn
Good spot for this
~2:45-3:50 is great advise even today.
Many thanks for all the suggestions !
I think Noatikl (the guys who developed 'Koan Pro' ?) and looking deeper in Xynthesizr, will be my first foray into these things, then look at the others afterwards.
I'm kind of less interested in looping strategies (even with random elements) more with things that are more 'generative'.
Use Xynthesizer to sequence something like Alchemy!
@bixnood said:
Too late to buy Alchemy now though
Borderlands might be worth a look, not sure about the update status of it though, also the ipad version of buddha machine while basic is quite serene.
Borderlands -
Buddha machine -
Yeah, @wmwm got what I was on about. Sorry to get anyone's hopes up!
@JohnnyGoodyear the "tapes ariund chairs in the apartment" could be urban legend at this point. Lots of different stories over the years. It is how it was made by all accounts (tape loops strung around things) but it may not have been in his apt.
@BiancaNeve said:
I wondered what that meant when i read it but now i understand.
@syrupcore said:
@syrupcore said:
I'm sure I've read about massive tape loops, spooled across tables and chairs, and held in place with pencils and gaffa tape in relation to Pink Floyd recording Dark Side of the Moon. Dave Gilmour: "What does that thing do, and why isn't it switched on?"
I'd second Noatikl. While Xynthesizer and some other MIDI tools give you randomness (based on Life or just one track), Noatikl lets you be as random or as precise as you want. You can control the key, the probability of individual notes and/or gates. Every voice will harmonize (unless you tell it not to), You can change scales, time signatures, pass CC messages. There is no other generative tool nearly as deep. The downside is that it is a bit crashprone and there is a significant learning curve. If I were picking two tools, I agree with Noatikl and Xynthesizer. The former is deep and complex, the latter, simple and approachable. Noatikl tutorial (http://whitherwalter.blogspot.com/2014/01/noatikl-for-ipad-tutorial-files-in-order.html)