I am super stoked that you know Machinedrum. Also, the live elements give this song such a cool sound. Crazy that you had to compensate for latency manually like that.
Honestly this is one of the most beautiful pieces and it's ambient but still moving forward and honestly it sounds like every note is crafted and deliberately placed (I mean, it is crafted but you know what I mean!!)
Awesome to hear a thorough run-through of the patch. Only thing I wanted at the end of this video was to hear more of the generated music itself! Sounded gorgeous.
Compliments! - For the musical content and how it didn't result in a mess but in a fine ambient piece; - For the overall mix en production, and how it didn't result in a mess but in a clear audio track As a beginner, you have set a serious goal for me to stepwise work at.
I like it! Great patch, nice outcome Benn. I've always been a big fan of Eno-style generative pieces. As a VCV Rack and Eurorack user, that never learned to play the piano, and without any formal music education, I naturally gravitate to making generative patches rather than actually playing them. Hours of good fun and sometimes excqisite results can be had that way. Love it!
Dude this is so good! I also got chills while listening, so here I am dropping a comment. I listened on a drive down from Seattle to Tacoma, it's cloudy but not rainy and streaks of sun everywhere, treelines on all sides, lots of green with brushes of orange red and yellow, and a big-ass mountain in the back. From the creation of the music to the experience of a random listener, serendipity all around.
Pure genius man! I am so blown away - and very interested in pursuing this further. Thanks for the inspiration...even though all of what you did here is well beyond my ability to even comprehend lol!
I’ve learned so much from watching your videos. I’ve started down the path of my own generative music with my modular rig. Still have so much to learn.
Dude this was such a good video and I mean it in every sense. The patch is beautiful and I really loved the way you shot and edited the Broll during the music.
I really loved the sound you made. It was sonically so rich, massive sound space, and just so polished and tinkly and quality. I would definitely have gotten shivers if this sound came to life all around me as well.
I really had the thoughts, specially when the bass came in, is having a 'composer module', which lets you control certain things like - travelling (how much the piece travels harmonically), dynamism etc. on a scale. Add in some triggers for things like crescendo/decrescendo as well as blend/level controls for different elements would make for a great interactive set up.
Learning modular synthesis is a good way to start, it kinda puts you in this generative music making mindset. VCV rack to start if you don't want the expense.
To me, one of the more interesting aspects of generative music is the ability to adjust things as the music is created so the composer is engaged in as much (or more) listening as they are playing. Did this setup allow for this? Were you tweaking things as you went along? Also, what do you do with this when you're "done"? Edit it and rearrange your favorite parts? Just record a long session and release it? My own experiments with generative music always result is something more fun to create than to listen to afterwards and I just wind up with recordings that I'm ultimately somewhat bored by. Have you experienced this? What do you do with generative music after you've recorded it?
Personally, I think it's because we are enthusiastic about creating new stuff from nothing! But it's not necessarily worth listening to afterwards because the two are not directly correlated. I think you need to figure out a way to have fun and still think and take a step back if your music is interesting. I think this is also something that takes practice.
@@loodow5001 this is a really good take. Sometimes music doesn't need a so what, it can just be and never be heard by anyone ever again. That said, I did recently take something generative and sampled and sliced it, then made a track out of the bits I like. Sometimes it can inspire you to do something else, but there's definitely nothing wrong with just using it to have fun and entertain yourself for an evening.
Hey man, Just wanted to say, I love your music. Im still to this day jamming to The April Sunshine Shed. I first heard it in a DDR type game (Mungyodance 3) and ever since ive been an avid listener. Keep it up man!
Ha! I had that happen to me once in the 90s'. Had started a loop of a simple midi riff, gone away and came back this crazy sonic wash of a thing was composing itself. I can post a link if folks are interested. Great work Benn making that intentional!
Benn, this was SUCH an inspirational video to me! I'm a guitarist from way back and I've just started getting into electronic music/synths, so this was AWESOME to see. \m/ \m/
This is great! Generative music often sounds, um, less than good… but this feels human and spacious. The addition of the Disklavier is a great touch. I would love to see more explorations like this. And the breakdown is super. I have an old PianoDisc robot midi piano, similar to a Disklavier, that I am in the middle of fixing and I can’t wait to put it in the studio! The piano itself works but the power supply and one of the key driver boards need an overhaul. What I can say so far is, I thought it was going to be awesome but I am already seeing that I was selling it short. I was thinking of it as a piano that would play back some of the music that I have been writing for piano, help in the writing process and maybe run an arpeggiated sequence into it to help the kids learn to jam on the piano. As I have been testing it, I have been going one note at a time and testing the velocity levels. Which led me to sequencing individual notes, one key at a time and all the sudden it started sounding like Steve Reich’s pulse works, as each key was playing a 16th note. Each key was rising and falling at different rates, creating these cascading pulses. Then I started randomly modulating the velocities and it broke up into weird melodies and counterpoint stuff. The kind of music I love but never make. This will probably sound pretty elementary but, It’s like I didn’t realize how percussive the piano is and in a relatively short period of time it has changed the way I play the piano. I mean, I am still terrible but all the sudden the piano is so much more expressive.
My acoustic guitar is infinitely more gratifying to me than all the synth gear I recently sold. Put a chunk of that cash into landscaping my garden actually. Bleeps and bloops all taken care of by software these days. I look at the nice open space in the room left behind by the gear and the distinct lack of cable mess and breathe a sigh of relief.
Very nice. I'm only 4 synths in but have the same passion for generative music and the NDLR. I like the feeling that it's almost like being at the helm of a ship.
I like how you used an £8.99 app as well as an H9000 on the same patch. Oh and thanks for reminding me about the Pyramid, I’ve been trying to distract myself from wanting that!
Ben I was going to ask if you have gear paralysis but I see here you definitely don't!?? Loved the patch. I've been trying something similar with my small eurorack setup, ornament and crime (my first time with quantizers). My fave part? The triggered percussive sounds on the piano case itself. Beautiful
I absolutely loved it Benn. I've always felt somewhere between a bit and very underwhelmed when it came to generative music because, though clever at times, never could shed the feeling of what a machine without a soul would (and did) spit out. I'm probably going to make prohibitive use of the term "feel" or some variation thereof because that always lay at the core of what was wrong with generative music. It felt like something trying to imitate or emulate music composition without an understanding of where music originates; in the end synthetic, wrapped in cellophane, disconnected from the world it attempted to interface with but no vocabulary or language to express intent or evoke a sense of being sitting at the center of a huge ever-growing pulsating brain that rules from the center of the ultraworld...ok ok, I realize that might be leaning a bit further out the window than warranted but I genuinely found this far beyond the usual and somewhat better offerings of noodling I've heard for years because...this actually made me feel something. I think it's fair to say that what it is generating is inhabited by part of your musical, harmonic and melodic sensibilities that you've been able to translate into a language the machines can analyze and come to a figurative sort of "understanding" of what it means to make music. I can follow what you're doing, but wouldn't have the first idea where to begin as this is so far beyond my (current) capabilities and technical know-how to replicate anything of the kind. Hats off to you good sir and yes, this is definitely something worthy of your time and deeper exploration. Just out of curiosity, do you think a generative little drummer boy that is capable of making beats to go along with the melodic that actually make sense in a structural and musical context? Or is that level of interactivity and intuitive creativity a step too far? I don't have a good understanding of what is possible so I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic. Thank you for what you do and the time it must take to set up experiments like this. You're a gem. Godspeed and much love from Germany, Diem
Absolutely loved the patch, I'm gonna get the whole recording cheers, though maybe you could have left it going for a whole hour and send us all to space! My only gripe is that now I think I'm going to have to buy a rings module, gorgeous noises!
Rings is incredibly fun. It only does the one thing as an oscillator with different flavors, but it does it so, so well. You can resonate other sounds with it but tbh I don't tend to like how that sounds as much.
No, I would not trade that gear for anything, I never get rid of gear ( except for that one time, which I really regret). That patch is amazing, hopefully there's a longer stretch of it somewhere. I just heard the tail end of an NPR piece on Alan Turing earlier this week, and your breakdown of the gear made me wonder what he would have thought. Even though it's "generative," it's ultimately %100 your creation. It's simultaneously ephemeral and timeless; the patch won't stay wired together for long, yet the video, and whatever other recordings you made will last as long as you want them to. Now I just have to convince my wife to let me by a ticket to Infrasound, so I can see you live. If the Delta Variant doesn't shut everything down again, you will really like Harmony Park as a venue.
'Premiered 23 hours ago' yeah I'm still 0day woohoo. I think you definitely did well in terms not only of the lengths you went to, but that the result was vaguey pleasing - nice single note melody to start, and layers upon layers from there, much like a human might make ambient electronica.
Disklavier question. Is there any way to reduce the clicking from the midi mechanism? I love mine but I can't really close record with it because of that sound. Do you have that problem at all?
I am thinking about picking up a few polyend percs, I would like to set them up on tongue drums, xylophones, a harp, maybe guitar strings. As well as your basic hihats and snare uses Do you think it would be worth it? Did you find similar uses to be interesting?
