This is almost an extrapolation on chaos theory, to use an analagous scientific stance. The randomness so determinedly processed as non-systematic is in fact an ordered sequence. The length of the sequence might be considerable, and in fact lend some perceived weight to the conjecture of random twelve tone output (Schoenberg tried this with more restraint), but the reality is, the argument of randomness is inevitably defeated by the eventual duplication of sequence.
We often think of musical phrases and variations as a one bar phrase or idea, maybe two bars, maybe even eight bars or 16. But if a phrase is 128 bars, or 2654 bars long, it's still reaches a point of repetition. How many combinations of 12 can you create before hitting the same sequence or set of multi sequences again?
If by using random as a genre you imply no repetition, then that's actually, factually, mathematically impossible. Even with 38 microtones, or 3,600,000 molecular tones, the repetition must come. so you need something to backup this statement of random. and like so many before, those who postulate random as a genre, or musical 'non-structure' is comparing it to music we view as conventional, however unconventional it may be.
The fabric and structure of our universe is anything but random, and although the equation might be measured as 'infinite to the power of forever,' because we can't measure any further with current knowledge or method or scientific imagination, infinity and forever are emotional labels we attach to what we perceive as unmeasurable by our understanding. If we measure music as random in the computational restrictions of twelve tones, a scientist or cosmologist whose benchmark is trillions of milies or light years, will still discover form and repitition, because that's the fabric that continuing existence at every level relies on.
Twelve tone experimentation has a label i guess because humans need to name everything, often for the ego of self recognition and self adulation as much as identification, but i profoundly disagree with the label 'random' because it simply isn't true.
So, going forward from here, 'random music' as we know it is simply an extra long sequence or phrase, and for me that phrase so often ends up as complete crap, for the boredom of knowing that it will take so long to get to the end, and remain so uninteresting.
It's repetition and variation of repetition that gives music life, as it relates directly to that 'nebulous combination of regularity' that we associate with heartbeat, breathing, walking, earth going around the sun, milky way revolving in a universe within a cosmos, etc.

Regards,

Alex.

@hermitage59 said:

If by using random as a genre you imply no repetition, then that's actually, factually, mathematically impossible. Even with 38 microtones, or 3,600,000 molecular tones, the repetition must come. so you need something to backup this statement of random.

I'm trying to find the post this subject of 'definition of random' refers to (perhaps it is in response to the Wolfram website itself)

But, anyway, I wanted to ask:

Why can't randomness produce repetition?

Surely 'absolutely no repetition' is less random than than 'the random chance of some repetition or perhaps no repetiton'

Surely it's only if the repetition is predetermined that makes it not random.

[[:|]]

@dpcon said:

Here's an interesting quote from the site:

Each composition in a sense tells in music the story of some system in the computational universe. And because the system follows a definite consistent rule, the compositions inevitably have a certain internal consistency--which is probably what makes them so effective as music.

This is the same principle found in most composition as with Mahler's cells: as long as there is a consistancy it will be percieved on some level by the listener..

It is not that simple. There is a mapping from a picture to music and there is no guarantee that the consistency will be preserved. Then there are extras: e.g. Wolframtones has 300 scales.. After that feature any science based on cell automates will blow up!

Nonetheless there are some parameters are there not?

As an aside concerning randomness, the old cliche of twenty monkeys typing will eventually produce Shakespeare's complete works has recently been determined to be impossible. Because - strictly due to mathematical calculation - to do this would exceed the calculated length of both Hawkins black hole evaporation and proton decay of the entire universe.

@lgrohn said:

But do you believe in Wolfram's "Scientific Foundations" concerning his new music:

http://tones.wolfram.com/about/how.html

Interesting but not new. As long as there have been mathematicians there have been attempts to create music from a mathematical basis. What Wolfram is describing was done about 20 years ago (maybe earlier) under the title of "fractal music." It sounds just as bad now as it did back then...

The mathematical basis of music has a very long history, at least as far back as Pythagoras.

rgames

@Another User said:

The mathematical basis of music has a very long history, at least as far back as Pythagoras.

Totally disagreed. Pythagoras worked only on strings and even then only approximately.

@rgames said:

Interesting but not new. As long as there have been mathematicians there have been attempts to create music from a mathematical basis. s

Has anyone read this book:

Music and mathematics from Pythagoras to fractals, Fauvel, flood and Wilson (eds.) 2003:

http://www.lms.ac.uk/newsletter/328/328_08.html

hmm... pretty interesting stuff, here.

I listened to the wolframtones demos and the first thing that struck me was how oddly inhuman this music seemed to be -- as though the logic of it was somehow too refined. I know, I know... logic is not a word that describes it, but there's a sense of unfolding that is somehow too "clear". It really sounds like a program running through permutations.

I think ground-up composition by computers will always be plagued by this general problem -- too much continuity (or too much discontinuity... the problem being the "too" part, not the latter). Without human intervention, these things just don't have the necessary illogic or inconsistency to be pleasingly musical. Actually, I would argue that the whole nature/nurture thing makes it extremely difficult to systematize musical composition, since the human brain can, quite easily, behave in essentially contradictory ways. Most importantly to music, human brains (or composer's brains... however human those may or may not be) can choose to disobey whatever process or path they've been on, and simply turn in a different direction. They can do this permanently, or for an arbitrarily brief period of time. And the frequency of such "shifts" of sense is what I think computers have an extremely difficult time emulating. Making matters worse (for the computer composer, that is) is the fact that the adjacent "models" of musical organization can be of arbitrary relation to one another, their connection being down to something as arbitrary as the composer hearing a particular song, or a bird, that day before setting to work on the next bar. For example, I don't know how many times I've started a piece with a specific "battle-plan" only to abandon it 2 or 3 minutes into the work in favour of simply following my own gut instincts. Now, clearly, those "gut instincts" are based on something. And I don't doubt that these are systems, of sorts. It's not the ability to replicate any one system that I think is impossible, but rather the ability to replicate the sudden jumps from one system to another, which human composers make quite naturally. And yes, those leaps can, for whatever reason, maintain a sense of final continuity in the final composition... don't know how. Sorry! Probably something about human beings as historical individuals, but I'm clearly guessing (read: bullshitting).

Just some random mental drooling... ignore if desired!

J.

I actually think your post is quite interesting, JBM.

@jbm said:

. Actually, I would argue that the whole nature/nurture thing makes it extremely difficult to systematize musical composition, since the human brain can, quite easily, behave in essentially contradictory ways.

What about this:
Creative people create "new future cliches" (Douglas Hofstadter).

"Systematizing musical composition" can't mean anything else than cliches, repeating oneself. On the other hand young Stockhousen created a new methodology for almost every new piece. I guess most composers are somewhere between.

If we pretend that a computer composed piece is based on some new methodology, how many times one should listen to it to see it there is something in it?

PS. Wolframtones demos are just bad ring tones, nothing else and in no way one could call them "pieces". I still have to wait for a good competitor for my Synestesia pieces generated from any pictures in 5 seconds...[/b]

@weslldeckers said:

I actually think your post is quite interesting, JBM.

Me too. Something essential there, in the human jumps-because-of-environment, yet a hidden, unknowable system despite it all.

Yes, JBM makes some interesting points here. Also I agree with creative people creating future cliches. Of course that is true. Art is cliche mixed with originality. Perhaps the greatest playwright ever, Shakespeare, used so many cliches you could fill a book with them. But he also wrote better plays than anyone else in the language.

However I think JBM leaves out an essential point which gugliel alluded to. That is that despite various intellectual ways of discussing "systems" and "emulations" and so forth, there is a mystery within the human mind that is not solved yet, called consciousness. And this fundamentally mysterious phenomenon is the most essential part of art. Art is in fact a realization, in physical, acoustic or linguistic form, of consciousness. So I believe this fundamental mystery is at the root of all art which succeeds in becoming significant in some way. And consciousness can be aped and imitated, but has not been duplicated. Though I think it is quite possible computers might become conscious. If they become sufficiently parallel, capable of generating significant (not merely silly) new systems from randomness, and self-reflexive. Also, there will have to be far more autonomic, self-generated construction of circuitry possible, outside of any human design, because no engineer, no psychologist nor neurologist has the slightest idea of how to explain consciousness, let alone translate it into machinery.

Just some more random idea generation for you...

There exists a common belief that young child are creative and for some reason they lose that ability. I guess that belief is wrong, Let's take drawing as an example. Because of weak motor and gestalt formation abilities what children do is just partly random strokes only. The "creativity" in on the eyes of the parentsy.

My claim it that "computer creativity" is analogous to what I wrote above. So called naivism is just emulation of children like work.

Computer generate music? Most of it is coherent. The main weakness of amateur composers is that the music is uncoherent. Got some ideas?

Well, you've got a point.

One thing however: what is art?
I think serious art can only be 'generated' from a desire to create something. The creation itself is a process of finding a way out for feelings, idea's, pictures, sounds that one feels or thinks or just 'knows'. The outcome isn't set but is constantly feeded by the urge to create.

A computer is programmed. Whatever 'consiousness' it can and will ever devellop, it is has started with simple programming at some point and therefore it will remain artificial, unnatural and unreal. (I'm not saying that the computer can't compose music that is nice to listen to)

@Another User said:

A computer is programmed. Whatever 'consiousness' it can and will ever devellop, it is has started with simple programming at some point and therefore it will remain artificial, unnatural and unreal.

Painters and composers take some kind of "seeds" from many areas, nature is one of those. Please excuse me of using my own sw as and example, but it takes the seeds from pictures the sw also being deterministic. In a way the computer is not programmed more than an artist. And many people believe that great art/music is based on unconscious matters and on the other hand computers are not-conscious...

There is a big difference between "not conscious" and unconscious.

@William said:

There is a big difference between "not conscious" and unconscious.

Yes, off course. But if an artistc creates something being "unconscious" doesn't it mean that he/she is is in some programmed state? Or are there some other possibilities?

@Another User said:

doesn't it mean that he/she is is in some programmed state? Or are there some other possibilities?

I think 'programming' has something to do with creation, where it comes to the artist not being able to get his/hers work created like he/she actually feels like (but can still be happy with the result).

The unconsious is too abstract for any person to clearly conceptualise. One can start with a definite idea of how a new work should be created and result, but the unconsiuous can steer away from those intitial thoughts.

I think what any artist does, or tries to do, is interpret all those 'waves' streaming trough the unconsious, trying to get a hold of them and put them on a canvas with oils or on a staff with a pen. (And then that process is influenced by skill, practise, luck and programming: when one looses his/her grip on the flow from unconsious to material, one can only let his/her programming 'save' the work, or let it finish, based on solutions found in the past or seen/heard elsewhere).

Actually, Gerard Edelman proposed a very elegant and plausible "explanation" of consciousness -- although, he would think of it more as an explanatory model of how consciousness is neurally possible. I won't go into it here, but if you feel like an interesting read, he's got two relatively recent books on the subject: "A Universe of Consciousness" and "Wider Than the Sky". Anyway, I agree with William that it is consciousness which provides the major difference. But then, if you read the Edleman book, you'll realize that my comment about human composers switching systems at the drop of a hat is, in fact, informed by Edleman's model of consciousness... (I cheated a little: I didn't give you the background for my comments! Nasty, isn't it! But I've been into the whole mind/brain theory thing for a number of years -- a hobby, of sorts.)

The whole subject of computers actually composing music, however, doesn't really interest me that much (nor really does the subejct of whether computers _can_ be conscious). But the idea of computers as something like automated composition assistants is, I think, very interesting. I even started messing around with this myself and have found that success depends entirely upon the creative imagination of the composer/programmer and also on her/his ability to quantify, in some way, what it is they find interesting in music. To simply tell a computer to help you compose music is, of course, a little silly. But to extract the essential, theoretical underpinnings of what you're looking for, and develop a representation of these in terms that a computer can work with can be quite rewarding. Now, before we all get into a battle about "creativity" and "robots" or whatever, keep in mind that I in no way imagine that the computer itself is composing, or even being creative. To me, the computer is simply doing what I ask it to do. It's just a slightly more abstract version of working with a sequencer -- the computer is helping. That's all. And there are many ways in which a computer assistant can be a very handy helper!

So it finally comes down to a knowledge and understanding of music. The computer is just a tool -- like a piano, violin, voice, etc. If you become good at "playing" it, then you can do some pretty exciting things. If not, then you'll never get beyond "Mary Had a Little Lamb". On the other hand, if I were a virtuoso pianist, I may likely avoid the computer altogether!

J.