Game of Life device generating music

[ndebello]

Hi! Hope this could be of some interest here. MAX4LIFE is a Max4Live Device I developed recently. In a few words, it's a MIDI Instrument for Ableton Live developed in the Max language (with a custom object in C and some pieces in JS). It uses the Game of Life Algorithm to generate music. You can find all the details here:

http://www.ohlife.it/index.php/musician ... s/max4life

Here is an excerpt:

==========
MAX4LIFE goals are:

- to generate automated music
- to be nonetheless playable by a human musician through:
- the run-time tweaking of its parameters
- the real-time use of its MIDI output
- the use of effects on its audio output.

MAX4LIFE generates (or not) a MIDI note for each cell at each iteration following these rules:

1) If the cell is unmodified (from the previous iteration), then no note is generated
2) If the cell becomes alive, then the note described below is generated
3) If the cell dies, then a note-off (related to the point #2 note-on) is generated.

The note is calculated following these rules:

- A “BaseNote” value is always present at any time. The initial value is 32. This value can be modified run-time via MIDI. If no such input is given, the value remains equal to 32 forever.
- There are (so far) four modes (“NoteMode” parameter):
- NoteMode=0: X and Y are added to BaseNote
- NoteMode=1: X and Y are added to or subtracted from BaseNote at 50% probability
- NoteMode=2: A minor 3rd (rounded 1 octave up) and a 6th (rounded 2 octaves down) are added to BaseNote, but a 10% probability remains of having notes in NoteMode=0
- NoteMode=3: A minor 3rd and a 6th (both rounded 1 octave up) are added to BaseNote, but a 10% probability remains of having notes in NoteMode=0.
==========

The result (in our opinion) is beautifully dodecaphonic (by the way it is dodecaphonic by definition...). The note output can anyway easily be filtered to pass only notes in a certain scale.

A the URL above you can also find links to SoundCloud audio tracks and to a movie sporting cellist Guido Rigatti playing along with MAX4LIFE.

Again, I hope this could be of some interest and I hope you enjoy it!

Nicola

[triller]

Intriguing.
IIRC, Brian Eno expressed an interest in just this sort of thing back in the late 1970s when MIDI was still in its infancy (GoL too).
triller

[ndebello]

Intriguing.

Thanks!

IIRC, Brian Eno expressed an interest in just this sort of thing back in the late 1970s when MIDI was still in its infancy (GoL too).
triller

Yes, and later he also did something "generative" (games soundtrack etc.)

Nicola

[ndebello]

By the way, the MAX4LIFE Project has been published in the Cycling74 site:

https://cycling74.com/project/chasing-l ... iALnGQrLXT

Nicola

[ndebello]

MAX4LIFE has a new version. See:

http://www.ohlife.it/index.php/musicians/15-max4life

Check out the music of a glider or of a looping configuration here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5GBohqKSgs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hohDkPpiZI

Nick