[HN Gopher] The Endless Acid Banger: algorithmic self-composing ...
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The Endless Acid Banger: algorithmic self-composing acid techno
music
Author : clomond
Score : 993 points
Date : 2021-04-20 04:28 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vitling.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vitling.xyz)
| noisy_boy wrote:
| For a more chill/relaxing vibe, turn down the BPM to between
| 20-25%.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| This made me want to grind lap times in Wipeout 2097. The
| soundtrack and atmosphere in that game was really similar to
| this, and like nothing I'd heard or seen before at the time. It
| probably shaped my taste in so many ways. Fond memories!
|
| EDIT: For those sharing the nostalgia, it turns out that the
| composer of the soundtrack, Cold Storage, remastered it and put
| it up on streaming services. It's a two part EP called
| SlipStream.
| gilbetron wrote:
| I was going to write a post saying I was glad a "later" wipeout
| game had the effect as the original had on me, then I looked
| into it and saw that Wipeout 2097 was called Wipeout XL in
| North American, and was the exact game I played :D So, I'll
| just echo what you said: the soundtrack was foundational in my
| adult music tastes :)
| 3dee wrote:
| Yes, CoLD SToRAGE has a lot of nice links to tracks on his
| website: http://www.coldstorage.org.uk/
| cheschire wrote:
| His bandcamp page has a lot of varied stuff, including his
| recent stab at improv ambient he knocked out in about 4 hours
| of work on this album:
| https://coldstorage.bandcamp.com/album/drift
| nullify88 wrote:
| Nothing gives me the tingles like listening to Sasha - Xpander
| from the WipeOut 3 soundtrack.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| It feels weird reading "from the WipeOut 3 soundtrack" in
| your post, as if Sasha is some largely unknown artist or that
| Xpander is a hidden B-side.
|
| I'd be surprised if there is a single person from the 90s/00s
| era who listened to electronic music who didn't know of
| Sasha.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations.
| ..
| nullify88 wrote:
| Yeah, I wrote that as a 11 year old me when I heard that
| track on WipeOut3 for the first time. I was still
| discovering electronic music via a bunch of unwanted
| Euphoria compliation albums. Wipeout3 was often played in
| both my PlayStation and CD player.
| samcodes wrote:
| well this really takes me back to fiddling with FruityLoops in
| all my spare time in my teens. very fun, and I love the code
| strangelove026 wrote:
| This is absolutely amazing. I love acid techno and this is such a
| cool and creative project.
| playingchanges wrote:
| Just want to say as someone who does a lot of hardware techno
| jamming this was SO FUN.
| severak_cz wrote:
| This reminds me I actually wanted to implement these wind chimes
| which are hanged from trees in parks.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_chime
| hannes0x21 wrote:
| another feature request: i really miss distortion!
| dariusj18 wrote:
| I feel like this should come preinstalled in every car radio.
| prennert wrote:
| It needs more bass.
| snakeboy wrote:
| Setting the clock BPM to minimum sets a calm working pace, more
| like a video game soundtrack or something. Awesome project!
| cobanov wrote:
| it's sounds like discovery channel's how it works show
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I grew up DJing records by Dave Clarke, Josh Wink, Green Velvet
| and such like, so this is right up my street.
| johanneskanybal wrote:
| amazing.
| mackman wrote:
| Anyone have any recommendations for reading material for an
| experienced programmer that wants to learn how to start to write
| procedural music? My kid is both learning to program and learning
| to sequence music I would love to be able to teach him how to
| combine the two. The last time I did any procedural audio
| generation was back in 1995 and I'm sure things have changed
| since then.
| lytefm wrote:
| https://sonic-pi.net/ might be interesting
| makeworld wrote:
| Sonic Pi is great. Another option with probably a harder
| learning curve is Tidal Cycles.
|
| https://tidalcycles.org/
| slver wrote:
| I remember installing ReBirth on my PC many years ago, and so
| amazed that it can emulate two whole friggin' TB303 analog
| machines, with a 909 drum kit too, just using the CPU. Which was
| pegged to 99% during playback.
|
| And here we are today, the same thing is running in my browser
| and taking 2% CPU.
| bennysomething wrote:
| Yep rebirth was amazing. Even more amazing was Reason from the
| same company I think.
|
| Wasted so much time on reason.
| conradfr wrote:
| It still exists, a new version has just been released.
|
| They went the subscription route though (if you look hard
| enough at the website you can still buy the software).
| dylanz wrote:
| Propellerhead, right? I remember opening Reason for the first
| time (I had no experience with music hardware) and was
| completely lost. I played around with knobs for a long time
| trying to make sounds with limited luck. Then I clicked
| something and the entire rack flipped around and there were
| patch cables hanging there that I could plug anywhere. I
| think I plugged things into different holes, the one sound I
| had going stopped, then I quit the program :)
|
| I eventually ended up reading the manual and getting the hang
| of it. My friend turned me on to it, and he had it mastered.
| He produced house music and frequently toured the world with
| Mark Farina back in the day.
| petecooper wrote:
| Rebirth was discontinued and released for free download in the
| Rebirth Museum, if you can find a genuine copy I think it still
| works on Windows 7 and Mac OS 9.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReBirth_RB-338
| Draken93 wrote:
| Amazing project, I am impressed!
|
| I never listened to this style of music before. I honestly do not
| really like it. BUT: Listening to this music makes me focuse very
| hard on my work. I love it!
| mjgs wrote:
| You just need some glow sticks.
| cobanov wrote:
| it's sounds like discovery channel's how it's made show
| parisianka wrote:
| Love your sound experiments
| minikomi wrote:
| This has an extra layer to it in that a lot of original
| experimentation was done with the 303 generating random patterns
| by removing the batteries for a period of time to reset the
| memory
| bicchiere wrote:
| very cool
| rjh29 wrote:
| Couple observations:
|
| 1. The whole thing is done in 1000 lines of code after
| unobfuscation (including 808 and 303 emulation, sequencer, random
| generation, UI) - technically it's quite impressive.
|
| 2. Part of why it makes such good patterns seems to be reliance
| on octaves. The patterns usually contain at least 50% or more of
| the same note repeated, across one or more octaves, and
| coinciding with rhythmic beats. Even when the notegen set is just
| F2, F2, F3, F4, G#4 (mostly all the same note) it's quite
| listenable.
| joshka wrote:
| https://github.com/vitling/acid-banger/blob/main/src/pattern...
| amatecha wrote:
| Years ago I used to hand-sequence synth lines like that and
| skipping between octaves was the "instant hack" to get
| compelling patterns by adding dynamism to the sound without
| making the melody itself too complicated. You could just jump
| around multiple octaves for literally two notes and have some
| pretty awesome sounding stuff. Heck, that's what an arpeggiator
| does, but honestly, doing it by hand can pretty often get
| better results. Combine with filter envelope key following for
| even more interesting sound on an otherwise "simple" pattern :)
| motohagiography wrote:
| This guy's stuff is next level, wow.
|
| The top level site vitling.xyz has a large set of complete
| executed concepts like this. Unbelievably cool.
| mitjak wrote:
| jesus, seriously. a prolific human.
| dboreham wrote:
| Genius.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Cute. All we need is for it to have maybe a couple more tracks
| and an option to instead randomize each track every 3-6 full
| bars, and I can leave it on all day...
| technofiend wrote:
| If anyone is looking for raw data they could potentially cut down
| to a training set of data, Marc Rebillet aka "loop daddy"
| regularly improvises songs by incrementally creating and then
| overlaying small one to three bar loops. He doesn't specifically
| make acid / techno music but some of it is EDM.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rebillet
| dekhn wrote:
| To me, the end goal is to be able to procedurally generate live
| Grateful Dead (fair amount of training data) and Sphongle (not as
| much, but fairly repetitive).
| meowface wrote:
| This generates much better patterns than any other music web
| project I've tried. Awesome work.
|
| If you had no music experience, snuck into a club, impersonated a
| DJ, and just pressed play on this, I think even without touching
| it, no one would notice anything's amiss. If you messed around
| with it occasionally, you'd probably get hired back. (And that's
| a compliment to the app; definitely not a diss of acid techno.)
| aeon97 wrote:
| Some of the patterns sound really good, but can you change the
| bpm? I think a DJ set at the same bpm all night would be kind
| of boring. I love acid techno, but I mix it into other
| (sub)genres, and have never heard a set where it was only acid
| techno. That said, it sounds like some of the drum patterns are
| more electro than techno, which is nice and provides some
| variety.
| tomglynch wrote:
| Bottom left next to the meter is the clock - turn it to
| change BPM.
| samstave wrote:
| https://i.imgur.com/WfI2Yka.png
|
| THere is a clock dial for bpm... does that solve your issue?
| sneak wrote:
| > _snuck into a club, impersonated a DJ, and just pressed play
| on this, I think even without touching it, no one would notice
| anything 's amiss._
|
| That very much depends on the club.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean I don't even know if people actually listen to acid or
| if it's a genre of music that online projects like this seem
| to latch on to. I don't recall (but I'm pretty insular) it
| being a thing anywhere.
|
| Trance/dance music, sure. I guess acid is a subgenre?
| tcpekin wrote:
| I can confirm acid techno is alive and well in Berlin. Lots
| of good music coming out and DJs playing it.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/H%C3%96RBERLIN
|
| They have a lot of DJs from this type of genre.
| kortex wrote:
| That tiled room gets me through the workday. In that ilk:
| Fear n Loathing. Art of Minimal. Trippy Cat Music.
| Beamer. A bit further from that sound but still great for
| coding: Cercle, Radio Intense, Cafe de Anatolia.
| tcpekin wrote:
| My favorite acid mixes have been Dr. Rubenstein's
| Quarantine series:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XYcwN4wXhI
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Acid is probably the most trending subgenre of techno these
| days, just cuz you've never heard of it...
| lookalike74 wrote:
| You don't know what you're talking about, here's a
| foundational acid track that's probably older than you...
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PbGTj9Yb_x4
| emptyfile wrote:
| YOU are the ignorant one if you don't know that acid is
| very much alive and kicking today.
| feu wrote:
| Nothing that the parent comment said implied that acid is
| a new genre. They were saying it's very popular now,
| which is true.
| stinos wrote:
| Yes it's a subgenre, and yes it's a thing and has been for
| a couple of decades. And it even has its own
| subgenres/'mixins' like acidcore or goa with acid
| influences (not sure that one has a name).
|
| Check e.g. https://everynoise.com/engenremap.html
| emptyfile wrote:
| For being an (insular) world traveller, you offer scant
| information.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Not really into this type of music, but I'd notice, it sounds
| pretty average.
|
| It's a cool project and concept, but people in the know would
| notice.
| teachingassist wrote:
| I like this genre, but I don't find this generated music
| satisfying. My brain is anticipating some 'rule of three',
| which I don't feel it's following and I therefore feel
| disappointment.
|
| I'm expecting it to switch an established pattern up (more
| than it does) on the third repeat, just as I get used to it,
| and to have fractal-like layers of patterns, which I didn't
| observe.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I agree. This is a very cool project, mainly because the
| actual synth sounds are good, so it sounds like a
| legitimate live acid musician hitting the good old
| "randomize" button on their 303 clone, but it still sounds
| a bit like a carefully managed "randomize".
|
| I think what makes it work for people is that it evokes
| that kind of IDM-ish hipster acid music where hearing
| something a bit unmusical without a 4-to-the-floor
| "release" is acceptable. But I'm not sure this system would
| have as much luck putting together an actual "acid banger"
| like Lochi's London Acid City, Purple Plejade's Blanche,
| Hardfloor's Acperience etc.
|
| The problem is that a computer can't know when it really
| came up with a "banger" of a sequence. When you have a real
| musician, they can sense when a particular sequence really
| "clicks" for people, somehow it just accents in places that
| sound cool. Then they can move ahead with that sequence,
| tease it and build it and bring it to resolution. This is
| the holy grail of generated music, I think, to somehow get
| a computer to a place where it can recognize whatever that
| quality is.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| > I like this genre, but I don't find this generated music
| satisfying.
|
| Same. You could generate a bunch of random notes using
| realistic string instrument samples, and be just as far
| from Bach.
| smoe wrote:
| I have listened (so no touch or watching it) for a couple of
| minutes and while the patterns all sounded fine (no an expert
| in that genre but have been to a number of raves) in isolation
| many of the changes didn't feel intentional and at times
| outright jarring without any transition leading up to it.
|
| I reckon in a club situation you would play the patterns for
| longer which would make it less notable. I do think it is quite
| impressive work, but overall it still sounds to too much just
| like switching between patterns without any bigger "musical
| arc" (not sure what the correct terminology I'm looking for is)
| in mind. But to be fair that is what a whole lot of peoples
| calling themselves producers sound like as well.
| Rochus wrote:
| Maybe besides https://openai.com/blog/musenet/? The present
| solution is rather primitive; just a bit of random with time
| and scale quantisation; but some people seem to be quickly
| satisfied.
| stinos wrote:
| _no one would notice anything 's amiss_
|
| I doubt it. Perhaps you were lucky with the piece you listened
| to, but I checked it for 5 minutes and the off-beat things it
| generates are pretty much unheard of in this genre. Not that
| there's no off-beat produced by humans, but it doesn't sound
| anything like this. Simply because what the machine is doing
| here brakes the rhythm too much, making it harder to dance on,
| and after all that's what this music is for.
| diydsp wrote:
| This is a rant, from someone who's been playing music for 3
| decades, rock, electronic, and classical. Also I've been
| meditating a lot. I started realizing recently the huge
| separation between thoughts about music and music itself,
| just as there is between thoughts and action. The world we
| live in, of temporary digital media, is a mirror of our
| thought processes. Our whole modern day and environs are
| spent in thoughts and media, with almost no action...
| particularly since we started working at home and ordering
| food in!
|
| Upon seeing a web page's "impressionistic
| interpretation/reduction" of a decade or so of music driven
| primarily by economic and social constraints (warehouse
| techno), it's so easy for people to pile up thoughts. It's so
| inexpensive and risk-free for people to say, "oh yeah, that
| there is good techno/acid," without _trying it out_ on a
| dancefloor, without having listened to hours and hours of it.
|
| There has strangely been a long-term dream of computer
| scientists to replace composition. To "spit out" songs as
| someone put it. It's usually too scary to ask ourselves
| "why?" because it usually is a game of validating one's own
| mind against others' impressions. For some reason, auto-
| composition seems like some kind of holy grail, but of what?!
| Saving money buying music? A fantasy of abundance? A kind of
| "gotcha!" that a pure thought-person has outwitted a silly
| irl composer? What do you actually get for creating an
| intelligence that wins a Turing test? You certainly don't get
| sweaty friends deliriously dancing on drugs at 3 am. You
| typically just get another social promotion in the direction
| of aiding greater powers at their control over the world. Is
| that what it's about? Closing ourselves off from human
| musical expression in exchange for increased financial
| standing? Get a job bc you proved you can fool some of them
| of the time? To validate a work ethic that regards music as
| frivolous by demonstrating that it can be simulated
| accurately enough?
|
| It's not obvious that every decent musical piece is a more
| complex and interesting story than its notes. That every new
| synthesis engine can only ever interpolate its inputs as
| opposed to incorporate new ideas and more importantly
| _experiences._ Experiences that relate to a person and group.
| We all have a sublime attraction to the story of Beethoven -
| to having been giving a profound gift and slowly lost part of
| it. We look for ourselves in his work, where did he break
| down? How did he handle his unfortunate circumstances?
|
| We perceive music in terms of passion - what it cost an
| individual in hours of life, blisters, health, money,
| dedication, etc. We revere Kurt Cobain for pouring out
| everything he had into his music. If a computer program wrote
| "You Know You're Right," and we knew there wasn't actually
| someone real who "never failed to feel....PAAAAAAAAIN," it
| wouldn't matter to us. Because we're all diffractions of some
| crazy spiritual force no one understands, but it seems like
| music is a form of "interdigiation" between us. So why plug
| our own listening energy into a random number generator and
| call it good? With respect to ppl saying, "now we can have
| acid anywhere, anytime," I say, "dial up great mixes on
| youtube, etc." There are real DJs who put together songs in
| streams that have even greater meanings than the individual
| songs - bc, again, music is more than just individuals, it's
| a collective act.
|
| And no matter what the tech of the day is, it will always be
| applied as if it were to be the "final," perfect means of
| autocomposing - remember fractal music in the 90s? PCA
| synthesis in the early 2000s? So as a fun programming
| challenge, i say to people, sure, write these programs. But
| why must we persist in proclaiming their relevance to our
| active lives when they only resonate in our thoughts.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I think you have a point that there is a certain type of
| music fan that really does want to make a human connection
| with the artist through the music, and algorithmic
| composition may never really be enough for those fans.
|
| But it's also the case that one of the things that makes
| electronic music appealing to a lot of people is that it
| generally doesn't have the cult of personality that exists
| in other genres. For sure, some parts of the scene ended up
| idolizing DJs instead, but I'd say a significant subset of
| techno fans are specifically not interested in the artistic
| motivation behind a piece and are instead just looking to
| hear some cool sounds.
|
| That's why electronic music is a great place to experiment
| with algorithmic composition, and that's why all these
| people joking about ravers dancing to washing machines
| because they're so drugged up kinda missed the point of
| what we liked about the music in the first place. It's not
| about telling a story, or communicating an emotion, it's
| just about creating a cool sound. It doesn't need to be
| more complicated than that. If a piece of machinery can
| create a cool sound incidentally, why wouldn't we dance to
| it?
|
| Of course, as I commented elsewhere, I don't think this
| particular example is especially notable. The music it
| generates is not much more interesting than what you'd get
| if you anyway just hit a "random pattern" button on a 303
| clone that lets you constrain the result to a scale. But
| that doesn't matter, because it's still a nifty project and
| a bit of fun.
|
| If you really are searching for the true intent of the
| artist, then you have that with algorithmic composition
| too. Click round the rest of this developer/artist's site
| and you'll find lots of little projects and experiments
| with music and software creations that - even if you don't
| see them as art, are at the very least the product of a
| creative hobbyist. There's your passion!
| bckr wrote:
| > What do you actually get for creating an intelligence
| that wins a Turing test?
|
| > it's just about creating a cool sound.
|
| I specifically want to create novel hard/dark/minimal
| techno bangers with similar effort to curating a
| playlist.
|
| I want a toy that makes music that will keep me and my
| friends up into the wee hours, without the toil, without
| the bleeding egoic labor.
|
| And I want people with good taste to have the same
| ability without putting thousands of hours into learning
| music theory and arcane details about DAWs and
| synthesizers and other... Traditional... Tools.
|
| I want to twist the nips of a sexy thump machine and get
| a good feedback loop[0] going between jerky knees and the
| stupid-smart NPC musician in my laptop.
|
| I want to spend the night in a tent with eyes that
| digests my tribe with its acid colors and plays us like
| so many marionettes until, exhausted, we cut the power
| and go home. And there wasn't a Guru making it happen, no
| Chad waiting his turn on the deck, just sound, lightning,
| and loving this f'n party, man.
|
| The other points about writing songs that express
| humanity, and the inventor's hubris and all that hit the
| mark. But deleting the boundary between bedroom
| production and the rave itself... I'd be hard pressed to
| imagine anything more fun and exciting.
|
| [0]https://vimeo.com/36579366
| stinos wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but in my opinion the general
| line of thought sounds a tad too pessimistic or maybe even
| fatalistic. Perhaps drivent by recent pandemic events? In
| short: I don't think that one or more people making music,
| live or otherwise, and others joining to enjoy/dance/go-
| wild/pick-your-poison on that music is _ever_ going to
| disappear.
| titzer wrote:
| I just checked out your YouTube channel. Very neat
| instruments!
| polypodiopsi wrote:
| 3am and really dancing.. not just doing repetitive motions
| on the straight pulse but living trough an embodied
| composition based in reception. the feel when u understand
| the music with your whole body so well that you can
| anticipate whats next, so you can even rythmically
| juxtapose it with what you dance and all that in a life-
| form with others sharing this experience as value in and of
| itself. damn i miss dancing. stupid covid
| scriptkiddy wrote:
| I think I'm interpreting algorithmic composition in a
| different way than you are. I am someone who has always
| been profoundly affected by music. This is to the point
| where some songs consistently give me frision or make my
| eyes water up. Music, for me, is a profoundly emotional
| experience. I was just never very good at creating music;
| that is, until a few years ago.
|
| I got into making music using DAWs and learned a lot of
| theory. I focus on making Synthwave/Outrun style music. Not
| the most technically complex genre sure, but there is a lot
| of room for creativity as the genre isn't very well
| defined. I also enjoy how Synthwave isn't really about
| musical complexity or technicality; instead, it's about the
| atmosphere. It's nostalgia for a time that never existed in
| a sense.
|
| Now, all of this to say that I'm still not a great
| musician. I've been learning banjo for the past year, and
| getting pretty good at it.
|
| I'll get to the point though: to me, algorithmic music
| isn't an end, it's a means to an end. The end in this case
| is composing music. Algorithmic music can be a source of
| ideas and inspiration in a way that nothing else can. This
| is especially true if we are able to specify the rule set
| for music generation. How many times have I sat down at the
| keyboard and tried to write a melody over some really cool
| rhythmic bass line I came up with? Countless times. If I
| could, for example, plug in the a key, rhythmic signature
| and feeling I'm going for and generate a melody, I would be
| able to finish more songs. I could use the generated melody
| as a starting point; it might spark some new ideas. This
| would be even cooler if I could provide the algorithm with
| a wav file or some midi and have it try to generate a bass
| line, melody, chord progression etc.
|
| So, I guess I see algorithmic music generation less as
| something to replace human made music and more as a tool to
| aid in sparking creativity in humans composing music.
| crucialfelix wrote:
| Original acid had lots of glitch beats and computer madness
|
| https://youtu.be/-VSjctLScAM
| hnhg wrote:
| I think you were unlucky, actually. I've been playing around
| with it on and off for a few hours now and sometimes it gets
| locked into the behaviour you describe, but for the most part
| it's very standard 4/4.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Same. 30 minutes in, and this acid is better than a lot of
| #acidtechno on Instagram. It's just missing having more
| accents on the 303 :)
| stinos wrote:
| Yeah I checked again and there's definitely more
| 'standard' acid in there. Now it's just waiting until
| someone records it and posts it as being theirs :)
| samstave wrote:
| Cant wait until "gem and the holograms" is a real thing
| (an AI powered rockstar who is not a real human but is a
| world-wide super-star)
| freeflight wrote:
| Sounds a bit like Hatsune Miku
| bckr wrote:
| The whole Miku Hatsune[0] phenomenon has the front end of
| this idea. If someone combines something like OP (which
| is the 2nd best classical algorithmic music project I've
| listened to) with some musical AI like Jukebox[1], most
| of the back end would be done.
|
| The missing parts would be the choreography and visual
| design. I also wouldn't personally say it's done unless
| it is marketing itself. At which point we are in
| singularity territory.
|
| [0]https://youtu.be/YSyWtESoeOc
|
| [1]https://openai.com/blog/jukebox/
| sideshowb wrote:
| > If you had no music experience, snuck into a club,
| impersonated a DJ, and just pressed play on this, I think even
| without touching it, no one would notice anything's amiss. If
| you messed around with it occasionally, you'd probably get
| hired back
|
| _Some_ sufficiently intoxicated people will dance to anything,
| though a good dj feels an obligation to make sure the thing
| being played is of good quality, regardless.
|
| As to who gets hired, that's more a matter of networking than
| musical talent.
| stinos wrote:
| _Sufficiently intoxicated people will dance to anything_
|
| I've heard this sentiment before and I always wonder whether
| it has been given enough thought or whether it's really true
| for you and the people you know. I mean, me and me friends
| have left more than one party because we'd rather stroll
| around the neighbourhood than endure the music the DJ was
| playing. Admittedly that happened more when not using drugs
| but it's not like drugs suddenly just make you accept
| anything. Not even MDMA, which is the one which has plenty of
| potential in that direction.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I mean, me and me friends have left more than one party
| because we 'd rather stroll around the neighbourhood than
| endure the music the DJ was playing._
|
| Was it because the music was bad though, or because you
| were opinionated against it? E.g. "me and my friends, we
| don't listen to 2-step garage".
|
| > _Admittedly that happened more when not using drugs but
| it 's not like drugs suddenly just make you accept
| anything._
|
| You'd be surprised...
| stinos wrote:
| _Was it because the music was bad though, or because you
| were opinionated against it?_
|
| One may not like certain music, but like with other art
| it gets into tricky territory to objectively call it bad
| :) Anyway: yes, it was because we found the music not
| good. Or not up to par with our expectations. Or not
| matching our current mood.
|
| I don't have strong opinions against music styles anymore
| since I went through puberty, the only period in a
| lifetime where that can be forgiven. Haha, I was one of
| those idiots who thought metal was the only true music
| and anything with an electronic beat under it had to die
| and rot in hell and fans thereof needed to be actively
| made fun of.
|
| Of course life is so much better if you just listen to
| literally anything and decide based on what you hear.
| Which didn't take long to realize. That being said, there
| are a lot of genres which usually don't do anything at
| all for me, i.e. which don't make me feel a thing. And
| others which I almost cannot stand listening to. Most of
| the time individual songs though. Completely normal, but
| not the same as being opinionated against it.
| sideshowb wrote:
| You have taste in music :-) I should have qualified that
| statement slightly more.
| bzzzt wrote:
| > Sufficiently intoxicated people will dance to anything
|
| There's an urban legend saying Richard D James (Aphex Twin)
| threw a microphone in a kitchen blender at a concert and
| people were dancing to that sound...
| polypodiopsi wrote:
| theres a whole genre working with these methods of analog
| aleatory sound generation (harsh noise)
| _joel wrote:
| Fanzatia NYE93, people outside dancing to a car alarm
| (quite a famous video)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rYXcmVSeBU
| samstave wrote:
| Wow - I was going to raves in SF during this period. I've
| seen these types of people before.
|
| Lots of stories from those days.
| _joel wrote:
| They caught up with the two people in this recently,
| they're still doing well (albeit not much raving nowadays
| :) )
| yboris wrote:
| This is a classic:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WFsIskJ05I (20 seconds -
| worth a watch)
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| And I'm sure there's an anecdote about the fire alarm at
| the Hacienda, and I've heard something similar from
| someone who worked at Fabric.
| stinos wrote:
| Sounds like a typical noise gig.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Those people need not even be intoxicated, because noise
| music is its own genre, and some of the people enjoying
| RDJ will probably be responsive to it; RDJ has had a few
| moments when he approached the Japanese scene. Indeed,
| when artists like Merzbow perform at festivals, it is
| clear that the noise stimulates some people's dance
| reflexes.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I was at one of those gigs before several years ago.
| Possibly because the volume was too loud, or the music
| generally too discordant but about 85% of the crowd went
| upstairs to the chill out room for the majority of the
| set. I remember a distinct "nope" feeling. The artist
| himself was off stage twiddling his knobs too.
|
| Those who remained were selling merch, behind the bar, or
| stood at the back with arms folded.
| sideshowb wrote:
| I was once at a Plump DJs gig where the fire alarm went
| off and it took everyone a minute to realize it wasn't
| part of the tune.
|
| I've also heard of people dancing to a generator when the
| hardtek stopped.
|
| To be fair to the people concerned, both examples
| actually match the style of the music in question.
| PoachedSausage wrote:
| Reminds me of the hardcore raver Tyres from the sitcom
| Spaced (genius British comedy):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfSndZPynQk
|
| Saying that I have had a similar thing with tracks that
| have police sirens in them when listening in the car, it
| takes a moment to realise it isn't an actual emergency
| vehicle.
| polypodiopsi wrote:
| I feel like kodwo eshuns early writing on the drug tech
| interface is relevant to this conversation:
| http://ccru.net/swarm3/3_abducted.htm
| gorpomon wrote:
| An implicit good quality in an app is having it make you feel
| like you have super powers. For a brief moment I could see myself
| in Ibiza, taking over a gig on short notice and making it work by
| using this app. Bravo to the author.
| have_faith wrote:
| Sounds are great. The only major thing that felt "off" is the
| overall composition over time. Just needs some more variety in
| structure over time and it's golden.
| byteface wrote:
| 30 mins in and still loving it!!!
| Toutouxc wrote:
| This is actually enjoyable, I could imagine working with this in
| the background. Great work!
|
| edit: You can't actually hide the window in Safari, as it goes to
| like 10 BPM. Is it a power saving feature or what?
| pablodavila wrote:
| Can't really use it in Firefox on Windows, the drum track isn't
| synced to the synths.
| tgv wrote:
| Browsers reduce the number of timed events in background tabs
| and windows, and it makes sense that the webapp relies on
| timers to trigger the changes.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| On his autotracker page, he mentions that Safari doesn't follow
| the webaudio spec as well as chromium or firefox. Might be
| related to that.
| nxpnsv wrote:
| You discovered the secret ambient mode :D
| ElectricMind wrote:
| I already started using it as background for my work :)
| mNovak wrote:
| I like how the buttons flash before changing. Feels like a
| videogame
| jspash wrote:
| I thought I was doing something wrong! A red flashing light
| usually means "warning". I couldn't figure it out. Time to have
| another go :)
| beforeolives wrote:
| This is great! I love the music that's coming out even though I
| usually don't listen to a lot of electronic music.
|
| Is there a way to find out a bit more about the UI and what the
| different options are? It looks very foreign and I'm just
| randomly clicking on things.
| simias wrote:
| I'm fascinated by the implication that in the not so far future
| we'll reach a point where we can teach a computer to generate
| arbitrary works of art endlessly.
|
| Want new episodes of Seinfeld? Just feed the existing episodes to
| an AI and ask it to make new ones. Beatles songs? Ditto. Spotify
| can look at your playlists and not only recommend tracks that you
| might like, but actually create some artificially. Post-cultural-
| scarcity.
|
| Of course by then we might already have reached the Singularity
| so it'll be a minor aspect of a gigantic revolution.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| That is not remotely implied by generating some algorithmic
| musical patterns. Good grief with the hyperbole.
| tomcam wrote:
| I'm endlessly fascinated how we on HN have the arrogance to
| assume we can do things like auto-generate Beatles songs or
| episodes of Seinfeld. Do you think comedy writers are sitting
| around the writing room saying "Man, in 5 years we'll be able
| to take over those nerd jobs, no problem."
|
| To auto-generate Seinfeld or Beatles... you have to be able to
| create as well as Seinfeld or the Beatles. Try it sometime.
| When you make a billion dollars and change popular culture,
| answer this post and I'll eat crow.
|
| Then you need to be able to do what no one else in history has
| been able to do, which is bottle that skill.
|
| Dude, most of us can't even figure out what kind of nails we'd
| use to use for exterior siding on a chicken coop.
| simias wrote:
| I wasn't talking about hand-written algorithms like the
| article is using, I'm talking about machine learning. TFA
| made me think about it because we've seen a lot of "this X
| does not exist" lately. I should've been more specific about
| what I had in mind, I agree that it's a reach with this
| particular example.
|
| Sure, we're still a long way away, but progress has been
| exponential. It'll probably take decades but I suspect that
| we may see something like that in our lifetimes.
| tomcam wrote:
| > It'll probably take decades but I suspect that we may see
| something like that in our lifetimes.
|
| Making good stuff is hard. They were saying the same thing
| in the 50s, 60s, and 70s with other AI approaches. People
| are actually pretty smart.
| Marazan wrote:
| Marvellous
| fergie wrote:
| Hands up if you were at an illegal rave in the 90's. m/
| kolinko wrote:
| Hands up if you were at an illegal rave in 2021! :)
| sabjut wrote:
| There is a clear difference between being on an unregistered
| event and being an utterly socially irresponsible idiot.
|
| Please do not go to any raves during this pandemic.
| kenneth wrote:
| One of the things that's cool about 2020 and 2021 is getting
| to experience things that were mostly forgotten relics of the
| past as very real experiences today. I never thought I'd go
| to a real speakeasy (not a gimmicky cocktail bar with a
| password or hidden door). Illegal raves in the woods have
| always remained a thing, but have gotten a bit of extra
| cachet this last year.
| sterlind wrote:
| and I never thought I'd get to relive the Spanish flu!
| hnick wrote:
| They're probably all illegal in 2021 in countries with social
| distancing laws :o
| T-A wrote:
| https://www.dw.com/en/dutch-researchers-test-ways-to-
| party-d...
| angus-prune wrote:
| Apart from industrial raves where gas masks are already
| part of the fashion
| de6u99er wrote:
| It's only illegal when they catch you!
| petecooper wrote:
| I highly recommend Kool London for 90s jungle, drum & bass,
| hardcore and related genres.
|
| http://koollondon.com/
|
| Also on Tune In, Alexa etc.
| jpcooper wrote:
| Also worth following on Soundcloud for old school jungle,
| with lots of mixes from back in the day:
| https://soundcloud.com/ethereal94. The ones from "KOOL -
| 94.5FM" (straight out of Clapton) are well worth listening
| to.
| gbh444g wrote:
| Feature request: if you replace the "techno" sounds with piano
| notes, you'll get a potentially interesting melody.
| austinprete wrote:
| Heh, going backwards in time to reinvent house :)
| ElectricMind wrote:
| No pills needed for this acid burn. Well done :)
| jmfldn wrote:
| This is a great project, well done. Algorithmic music is
| fascinating to me, I feel like there's a lot of untapped
| potential in the concept particularly with more 'complex' genres
| where higher levels of composition and structural continuity are
| required. This tends to work much better with loop-based genres
| but I'd personally love to do a side project on something that
| could write melodies from some sort of generative grammar for
| example. A lot of these exist but the results are mixed very
| often.
|
| For me the interesting part is not just in getting a computer to
| do all the work but using it as a compositional aide. You can
| think of it at writing music at a higher level of abstraction.
| Rather than writing a score you can write the rules of the score
| and use a stochastic process to spit out permutations for
| example. Eg imagine writing a program that could spit out Eric
| Satie-esque melodies.
| awild wrote:
| Autechre have been doing that for quite a while now using Max
| et al., including computer based composition. Irlite [0] (and
| Bladelores) both feature some form of compositional changes
| throughout the track.
|
| 0:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmwW5kBfltk&list=PL1yYEMwtFZ...
| Rochus wrote:
| > I feel like there's a lot of untapped potential in the
| concept particularly with more 'complex' genres
|
| Well, you're in good company. This goes back for many decades.
| Here is a summary of many attempts during this time:
| https://www.amazon.com/Algorithmic-Composition-Paradigms-
| Aut.... Really convincing composition started to appear only
| recently using transformers, e.g.
| https://openai.com/blog/musenet/. The present solution is a
| rather primitive one in comparison.
| jmfldn wrote:
| Awesome thanks. Yeah I'm vaguely familiar with the history
| but certainly not the state of the art. Will take a look at
| this open AI project.
| 05greg wrote:
| Wholeheartedly agree using computers as a compositional aide is
| a fantastic thing, it's really quite satisfying to define some
| rules by which the program can modify the inputs (melodies,
| chords, drum patterns) and have it output interesting results.
|
| I coded up some jungle music not long ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPan4gRSwZs&t=79s
|
| I'm working on a procedure to modify the drum breaks in a
| conventional way, meaning I have to think less about keeping
| them interesting while live coding.
| sideshowb wrote:
| Well you just inspired me to switch on my monitors :)
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Excellent project, also serves to provide some quick audio
| latency test for devices. Quality of playback seems to vary
| between browsers and devices (DDG/FF -Android); I presume it's
| consistent and better in iOS devices as it's known for better
| audio latency(Don't have one nearby to test).
|
| If the author is reading this, Would love to hear about the
| quirks related to audio playback in browsers/devices you've
| found so far in developing this.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| This kind of algorithmic music has been a thing for decades. I
| have a funny memory of going to a university open day as a
| child in the late 80s/early 90s and a presentation by some
| boffin with a synthesizer was what made me want to grow up and
| become a computer programmer.
|
| Back in the early days, I think CSound[0] was the big software,
| not because it can make especially interesting sounds compared
| to more "musical" software synths, but because it's a proper
| programming language which gives people the freedom to do these
| higher level abstractions.
|
| In the hardware world, a lot of this developed out of
| arpeggiators and analog sequencers. I remember years ago I had
| a "P3" sequencer[1] which implemented a lot of these sorts of
| algorithmic pattern generaton tools - you could do things like
| quantize to a scale, then set a sequence of percentages that
| themselves impacted the likelihood of a particular note being
| played. I see there is a new version of this sequencer[2] too.
|
| Lots of analog sequencers provide similar features, and if you
| have a modular setup you can ramp the tempo way down and have
| them control chord progressions or swells instead of 16th note
| patterns. Pretty sure this is how a bunch of live ambient music
| was done back in the day.
|
| That was a fairly niche corner of electronic composition, but
| even in the mainstream of 20 years ago stuff like the Emu
| Proteus sound modules featured pretty advanced programmable
| arpeggiators where you could essentially write the skeleton of
| a musical sequence and then modify what notes of it actually
| ended up getting played by deciding which original notes to
| start from. I always came at this more from that
| minimal/techno/sequence-based side, but then I went to a
| wedding and saw a wedding singer playing an "accompaniment"
| keyboard which showed the other side - entire chord sequences
| and backing instrumentation getting generated in real-time
| based just on what chord the keyboard player chose to hit with
| their left hand. It's surely only a small step forward from
| there to being able to input a higher level algorithm that
| could develop a whole song.
|
| [0] https://csound.com/
|
| [1] https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/sequentix-p3
|
| [2] https://www.sequentix.com/shop/cirklon-hardware-sequencer
| api wrote:
| The question is whether the use of AI could be elevated above a
| crutch like autotune to actually being used as an _instrument_
| like a synthesizer. In other words: is it being used to amplify
| the ability of the musician or compensate for their lack of
| skill?
| spiralganglion wrote:
| Agreed, but I'd like to take it a step further. Rather than
| fitting new compositional ideas into the patterns and
| structures of our existing music theories, I'd like to use
| computation to create new theories.
|
| As an example, I've become really interested in the fact that
| tempo and meter are taken as constant, grid-like structures in
| pretty much all existing music practices (even within, say,
| Gamelan, though there you do get a lot of pushing and pulling).
| Typically, you have polyrhythms and polymeters to fit more
| interesting patterns into the fixed grid, and accelerando and
| ritardando to adjust the rate of grid traversal, but that's
| about it. Hardly anyone applies algorithmic/geometric thinking
| to the grid itself -- likely because more complex rhythmic
| foundations would make human performance nigh impossible.
|
| To explore this space, I created my own little generative music
| system that takes a handful of simple motifs (a la Riley or
| Reich) and stacks them into a recursive temporal structure,
| which is then pushed logarithmically toward a tempo of 0 or
| infinity. There are some rules so that the "performers" only
| play at comprehensible scales, and that pitch modulation keeps
| the piece interesting to a listener. You can listen to it here,
| if you'd like: https://ivanish.ca/diminished-fifth/
|
| I'd love to see more folks working on tools to make these sorts
| of theory-stretching ideas easier to access and explore. For
| instance, I've really been struggling with how to hand-compose
| music that can fit within a nonlinear/recursive structure of
| time. Existing tools like Tidal or Max/Pd were built to support
| the existing theory. I think we need new tools that allow you
| to design the theory itself.
| almostkorean wrote:
| In the same vein as this, David Bowie created an algorithm that
| generated lyrics and gave him ideas for songs
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/xygxpn/the-verbasizer-was-da...
| sideshowb wrote:
| As someone who writes mainly loop based genres I agree and have
| thought about much the same stack of abstractions. Acid techno
| is a great starting point as it's not known for complexity,
| being traditionally produced with a 909+303+303, devices that
| support only a 1 bar loop (a genre with origins that predate
| wide availability of digital audio workstations). But like
| yourself I'm interested in more complex genres.
|
| One example of more general EDM levels of abstraction for me
| might go
|
| 1a. this tune needs to play with space (stereo/reverb) more 1b.
| we need some interesting background sounds
|
| therefore
|
| 2. we need an interesting, wide background sound to start at
| bar 32 and end at 64
|
| Dropping in something from a sample library to achieve that
| wouldn't satisfy me as every step of constructing that sound is
| following other rules of abstraction e.g. how should it fit
| with the existing tonal balance? with the existing rhythm? etc.
| But at the same time the process is 1% inspiration 99%
| perspiration - it's following unwritten almost-rules which
| would be fascinating to capture in an algorithm if I could.
| They wouldn't have to be completely general rules, just my own
| personal ones.
|
| A related (light hearted) thing I wrote on EDM abstractions a
| while back
| https://omnisplore.wordpress.com/2017/11/25/kolmogorov-compl...
| Supernaut wrote:
| > 909+303+303, devices that support only a 1 bar loop
|
| Ha, no, you can input a great deal more than a single bar
| into them. They were designed to let users store a variety of
| patterns, which can then be assembled into a traditional
| intro-verse-chorus song structure, if you so wish.
| munificent wrote:
| Even with a single pattern, you can add a lot of variation
| just by changing the pattern lengths to do polyrhythms. Say
| you do: 909: 16 steps 303 bass: 5
| steps 303 lead: 3 steps
|
| Now you have a sequence that only repeats every 240 steps
| or every 15 bars, even though each device never uses more
| than a single 16 step pattern.
| sideshowb wrote:
| Doh I stand corrected :) Though still nowhere near as much
| potential for refining the end result as you get with a
| DAW. That's not to say live performance doesn't have value
| of course!
| kortex wrote:
| Yep I've done it. Suuuper tedious. Which is why I suspect
| even though you can do 2 or more bar phrases, single bar
| loops (vamps?) are pretty typical, instead varying the
| filter envelope and distortion over time.
| sideshowb wrote:
| Off topic but I found my preferred method of 'live'
| performance (for dnb) was to write a tune in the DAW with
| the intention that a few of the lead parts be played
| live, then switch off those parts and render what's
| effectively a backing track. Meant I could sort the
| mixing/mastering beforehand and keep in the flow of
| rocking out on synths when it came to the gig. I did use
| ableton but only to auto load synth patches/effect chains
| when each backing track was triggered.
|
| I tried many other approaches involving 5 people driving
| a live looping rig but the above was worked best for me,
| which I guess made my act a 2010 equivalent of the guy
| wearing the burgandy velvet suit in the hotel bar ;-)
| wpietri wrote:
| I get why people want machine-aided composition. But I'd love
| to see a project like this go in the opposite direction.
|
| Maybe put a row of buttons at the top: "I am [Loving it]
| [Grooving] [Fine] [A Bit Bored] [About to Quit]". Then use that
| (plus browser data and window-close data) to train ML models to
| maximize engagement. Or perhaps to hook it up to facial
| expression recognition.
|
| When I watch friends DJ, there's this great feedback loop
| between how the crowd's behaving and what they're putting on.
| They're clearly using the music to achieve certain mental
| states among listeners. I'd love to see how well that can be
| done algorithmically.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Put a camera on the crowd, and motion-track the bouncing of
| heads. That'll give you two banger metrics: one, how far
| they're all bouncing/jumping/nodding, and two, how
| consistently they are.
|
| That would be enough to construct a robot DJ that could track
| the variations it was making, and rate them for
| 'better/worse'. Then you just make a cool-looking puppet to
| store the camera in, that can move around and possibly wave
| an actuator like a proper DJ, and the rest is machine
| learning.
| jmfldn wrote:
| That would be a fun project for sure!
|
| So many of the selections that great DJs make are curveballs
| and surprising choices. This is less true in more samey
| genres, but true pioneering selectors will tend to surprise
| you with their taste and juxtapositions in a way that's hard
| or maybe even impossible to really capture in an algorithm.
|
| Put another way, even in something as simple a song
| selection, the weirdness and contingencies in human creative
| decision making is a feature not a bug.
|
| The efficiency and cleverness of algorithms can create create
| great powerful recommendation engines but there's nothing
| like the idiosyncrasies of a person as a curator.
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure! I'll always appreciate the deeper stuff that only
| humans can do. I just think it would be interesting to see
| how much of it we could automate. E.g., could it get to the
| level of decent background music?
|
| Of course, there's always the possibility algorithmic
| composers could do even better than humans. Clarke told a
| story about that in 1957:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Melody
|
| Text here: https://archive.org/details/1957-02_IF/page/n71/
| mode/2up?vie...
| Digit-Al wrote:
| I'm not entirely convinced by your argument. Some years ago
| there was an episode of the Gadget Show where they were
| testing an app for suggesting food ideas. I can't remember
| how it was supposed to work, it was too long ago, but it
| was something to do with having profiles of different food
| types programmed into it and then it used some sort of
| algorithm to compare taste profiles and come up with
| combinations that should work.
|
| The combination it came up with that they then tried
| selling on a food stall was chocolate on pizza. It wasn't
| to everybody's taste but some liked it, with one describing
| it as "weirdly delicious".
|
| It doesn't seem completely ridiculous that if an AI could
| be trained to recognise patterns of music that worked well
| together that it could analyse a large corpus of recorded
| music and come up with surprising mixes that you wouldn't
| think would work, but do.
| jmfldn wrote:
| I don't doubt it's possible to come out of leftfield for
| an AI DJ but I still wonder if it could be a tastemaker
| like a great DJ. I don't just want great individual
| mixes, I want consistent, surprising yet tasteful
| selections that define an idiosyncratic style.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I wonder if you could do the feedback mechanism in a more
| subtle way, for example by pairing the musical composition
| component to an interactive activity like playing an action
| game, where movements and so on in the game trigger a
| response in the music.
|
| There are lots of games that do this kind of thing at a
| _rhythm_ level, like Necrodancer and more recently BPM [1],
| but I think there 'd be the potential to do a lot more with
| it than just rewarding beat-alignment with a pre-cooked solo
| that blazes over top of the base track.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V684o6wBaSQ
| abetusk wrote:
| Vitling just published the source (CC-BY) [0] [1].
|
| [0] https://github.com/vitling/acid-banger
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/vvitling/status/1384434602442428416
| joshka wrote:
| The pattern generation logic[1] is surprisingly simple.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/vitling/acid-
| banger/blob/main/src/pattern...
| abetusk wrote:
| Yeah, very nice. This gets something right that so many other
| generative music experiments get wrong, which is variation in
| note length (aka tempo). You see other generative music use
| Markov Chain for note choice but not note length and it
| quickly becomes very "same-y", whereas this has, for the vast
| majority of melodies it generates, a natural feel (to me).
|
| I wish I understood the WebAudio API better to get a better
| handle on how the instruments are created.
| starkd wrote:
| Interesting project, but terrible UI. If you're not immediately
| clear what you are doing, you really have to struggle to
| comprehend what the adjustments are. Some of the knobs don't
| appear to do anything.
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| The UI appears to pay homage to mod trackers from back in the
| demoscene days. Who remembers Elwood?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastTracker_2
| tlhunter wrote:
| As a fan of Acid music this is actually pretty good. It even has
| "drop" measures where the drums disappear and the lead goes
| through a dynamic cutoff filter. Every now and then a bad
| lead/bass combination does pop up.
| knacky wrote:
| Hooked as soon as the beat kicked in.
| jasfi wrote:
| Very cool, but the UI could do with a pause button.
| technocratius wrote:
| You clearly do not understand the nature of acid techno.
|
| Kidding aside: i agree. Also live manipulation of the patterns
| by clicking to add/subtract notes/drums would be cool.
| kortex wrote:
| > pause button
|
| All it does is play a sample of a metal door squeaking open,
| apply a lowpass, and add ambient chatter of the back alley
| smokers.
| LegitShady wrote:
| and someone drunkenly asks you for a cigarette
| Rochus wrote:
| Math.random() quantized in time and scale. No DNN.
| new_here wrote:
| Some nice stuff on their Bandcamp too: https://music.vitling.xyz/
| krrishd wrote:
| pretty cool, i'm tangentially reminded of
| https://jaipaul.bronze.ai/
|
| > This version of Jasmine by Jai Paul is created using the BRONZE
| AI engine. On each listen, Bronze performs a unique and infinite
| playback of the piece.
|
| Bronze is a new technology that allows music creators to utilise
| AI and machine learning as creative tools for composition and
| arrangement. Bronze is also an audio file format which will
| revolutionise music playback, enabling artists to release non-
| static, generative and augmented music.
| qvrjuec wrote:
| I was kind of disappointed by the OP's link because of the bar
| that this Jai Paul/Bronze track had set for me. Thanks for
| sharing this!
| pradn wrote:
| What a perfect song to pick for this experiment. It's extremely
| listenable. Jai Paul is a genius and my biggest problem with
| him is that he doesn't produce enough songs. His story is an
| interesting one, if you are interested. His laptop with his
| music was stolen and the music was leaked, and he disappeared
| from the scene for years afterward.
|
| https://consequence.net/2013/04/report-jai-pauls-album-leake...
| krrishd wrote:
| Totally agree on Jai Paul, I'm a big fan as well :)
| amatecha wrote:
| Nice, someone should hook this up to a real 303 and 909 with Web
| MIDI API... heheh :) Also this synth line with heavy delay sounds
| like something from Velvet Acid Christ, haha
| nxpnsv wrote:
| More gems on vitlings site:
| https://www.vitling.xyz/toys/autotracker/
| Macuyiko wrote:
| I really liked this one:
| https://www.vitling.xyz/toys/triple_saw/ - very moody!
| smusamashah wrote:
| It's simple 2d canvas API. No shaders. That's amazing.
| https://github.com/vitling/triple-saw/blob/master/crt.js
| aembleton wrote:
| This is more my genre of music. I can have this on in the
| background.
| andybak wrote:
| Quite listenable!
| samjanis wrote:
| great find!
| stagas wrote:
| That's pretty good!
| technocratius wrote:
| Wow, excellent execution. I listen to a lot of acid and am amazed
| how good this sounds. Great way to discover interesting patterns
| for further music making as well I can imagine; how would that
| work with copyright though?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| IANAL but, it's not illegal if you don't get charged with
| anything.
|
| It reminds me of a project done some years ago, some people
| generated millions (billions?) of melodies as a means of
| trolling copyright claims.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| > It reminds me of a project done some years ago
|
| This comment here sums up how bonkers the pandemic is and
| what effect it's having on people: that was reported in
| February of last year!
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
| tech/ne...
| sterlind wrote:
| reported the day before I left work and haven't yet
| returned. no wonder it felt like a decade ago.
| rhelsing wrote:
| Really cool project. I have been spending most of my free time
| lately on a similar side project: https://neptunely.com. It takes
| midi files as input and generates original samples that fit with
| your composition.
| avereveard wrote:
| this is awesome, tho I would love a way to share/store the state
| via links
| Mulpze15 wrote:
| I remember chasing down history of acid music online and
| discovering Charanjit Singh who created Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat
| in 1982:
|
| https://youtu.be/sB4RYBpwV0A
| amatecha wrote:
| That is awesome!!! Love it.
| matt_j wrote:
| Nice!
|
| I love acid music, such a simple formula with infinite variation.
| There's something so delicious about the wobble of a 303
| bassline.
|
| I just want to mention Tin Man for those who are interested in
| acid. He writes, mostly, quite palatable (often mournful) tunes
| at house music tempo, but he has a good range and goes full
| banger at times. A real wizard with a heart for the genre.
|
| https://www.discogs.com/artist/313993-Tin-Man-3
| scns wrote:
| His Album Neo Neo Acid is one of my all time favorites
| operatorius wrote:
| Tin Man collaborations with Donato Dozzy on Acid Test eps are
| one of the best acid tracks Ive ever heard
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpEDpgCbCPg
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COTZGbcS5BQ
|
| Also. Rashad Becker masters most of the Dozzy's and Tin Man
| works. Very betufiful mastering work: so mellow, so clear and
| spacious. Take a listen of Donato Dozzy - K album on a good
| system, you'll hear so many details and beautiful spatial
| placement.
| lodovic wrote:
| What a wonderful site, I love it. Sounds so good. I'd love to
| have a feature to make the bass drum regular, though, to keep the
| beat pumping.
| vascocosta wrote:
| I'm a programmer. I also enjoy occasionally producing electronic
| music, usually within the trance genre. Nevertheless as a good
| programmer I'm lazy and that reflects in my music creation. I'm a
| minimalist, but minimalist trance doesn't sound so good in my
| opinion. Many layers are often needed, with complex melodies, if
| you want it to sound professional.
|
| On the other hand, acid techno seems to be minimalist by design,
| I love it. If I can create it programmatically even better.
| Mixing automation with some human interaction seems to be the
| best of both worlds. I'm in love with this and feeling like
| creating my own acid techno production tool, with a mix of
| automation and interaction.
| Ccecil wrote:
| Great work.
|
| This reminds me a lot of the algorithm that drives the Korg KARMA
| workstation. I often found myself letting it run like this to see
| where it decided to go. The settings were changed by knobs but
| there was often slight drift and changes...as well as a lot of
| 1/256 measures.
|
| The KARMA architecture moved on to the Korg M3 and OASYS (IIRC)
| and is very interesting. There are some good videos on the topic
| and Stephen Kay I have found to be very approachable in the
| forums (albeit a decade ago).
|
| There was even software to make your computer "double" what the
| KARMA was doing so you could expand to even more
| channels/instruments...days like this, I miss my synth.
|
| edit: KARMA= Kay Algorithmic Realtime Music Architecture and it
| was a variant of the Korg Triton system.
| akomtu wrote:
| That's pretty impressive. Take it to the next level: pattern of
| patterns. Your level-1 patterns look like a sum of simple
| repetitions. A level-2 pattern would be a simple repetition of
| level-1 patterns. And so on.
| swen-rekcah wrote:
| I may be opening a can-of-worms by asking this question.
|
| But, what are the rights around using this algorithmically
| generated music? Is it free use? Who owns the copyright
| w-m wrote:
| The webpage seems to be blatantly ripping off some of the
| melodies copyrighted by these guys:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/whats...
| Iv wrote:
| The button presser could make a claim on the copyright. I could
| see a legal challenge being filled as this not filling the
| requirement for being a creative work and hence not
| copyrightable.
| ssijak wrote:
| If anybody wants to add something related to their
| Spotify/Deezer/Apple Music playlists, search for: A _S_ Y*S,
| Emmanuel Top, Kai Tracid
| MadWombat wrote:
| It is cute that this is implemented in the browser, but to be
| honest, this does not sound any different from a whole load of
| generative modular synth patches out there.
| s1mon wrote:
| This is definitely enjoyable and impressive for being done in a
| browser. It covers some of the core bits of a prototypical acid
| set up, but there are some basic things missing.
|
| The "909" section only has 4 sounds with some (4?) different
| velocity (think loudness) levels. The real thing had 26 knobs to
| adjust the 10 different individual outputs (plus L/R) of 11ish
| sounds (ride and crash cymbals are on separate outs, but
| open/closed high hats are on one out). The "303" has 4 knobs but
| the real thing has 6 and the delay would be from some sort of
| external effects, so really it's missing 3 controls (tuning, env
| mod, and accent).
|
| The note color seems to indicate accents and slides (the yellow
| and purple), but I'm still having trouble hearing which is which
| and it's not really doing a great job of getting to the level of
| resonance and distortion that happens with the real thing. It's
| nice that delay has been added as an effect on both "303"s and
| the overall mix, but there are so many classic acid tracks which
| relied on some sort of distortion either through external effects
| or various mods.
|
| The whole issue of 303 emulators is a huge rabbit hole in and of
| itself. [1] The history of the 303 and its various uses can also
| go on for hours [2]
|
| [1] https://djmag.com/longreads/8-best-tb-303-clones-
| according-a...
|
| [2] http://blog.dubspot.com/roland-tb-303-spotlight/
| rmurray2050 wrote:
| wow this is excellent
| joaoheleno wrote:
| The quintessential acid track is "Acid Eiffel" by Choice (Laurent
| Garnier, Shazz).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1YdsA5XAPU
| arximboldi wrote:
| I'm collaborating with this company working very much on this
| space: giving artists simple tools to make music that is non-
| linear and generative, where the artist expresses structure and
| composition, and the machine is the performer: https://bronze.ai
| calhoun137 wrote:
| This is so awesome! I have wanted to make something like this for
| like 20 years, this is much better than anything I made though.
| Great work
| bitwize wrote:
| Reminds me of how the music in Rez for each stage is a single
| short loop. It's longer than a bar; I think it might be four bars
| or so. A 32-bit bitmap for each "layer level" controls which of
| the loop's 32 MIDI channels are active, creating the illusion of
| an ever-shifting soundscape.
| dnafq wrote:
| Now to map this to a MIDI controller...
| geoxist wrote:
| Done: https://github.com/vitling/acid-banger/issues/1
| justaj wrote:
| Is it me or does the tempo jitter all over the place?
|
| For me this is under Chromium v89.0.4389.90 as well as FF 87.0
| (64-bit)
| RootReducer wrote:
| This is amazingly well done. Although simple, it's actually
| enjoyable to listen to.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Why does it slow down when I tab away from it (Safari)?
| RootReducer wrote:
| timeouts/intervals are slowed down when in inactive tabs
|
| https://gomakethings.com/the-delay-on-settimeout-and-setinte...
| reasons wrote:
| Jamming out to this in my home office. Someone hand me some
| upside down water.
| vesinisa wrote:
| I have seen plenty of AIs that supposedly generate music, but
| this is the first one where the results are actually plausible.
| This is not too different from what I remember hearing in the
| early 2000s raves. Only the sound-system back then was maybe a
| bit beefier than my meager laptop speakers. ;) Well done!!
|
| I have actually been working all morning now with this as my
| background music. It is great.
| lethologica wrote:
| I don't know anything about acid techno. Can someone comment on
| how accurate this is to the genre? I can't seem to get it to do
| much but make random beeps and boops, but maybe that's just the
| style of music?
| presentation wrote:
| This is pretty much how it sounds - the particular synthesizer
| and tweaking its parameters (resonance, filtering, and so on)
| is the main defining feature, the particular classic drum
| machine used typically goes along with it - but there's a lot
| more variation you can do besides just slowly modulating it
| like this program does, as well as crossovers to other genres
| (using that squeaky synth sound in other genres of electronic
| music).
|
| This anxiety inducing song by Evol basically switches between
| samples of different acid tracks every other beat, serves as a
| nice primer for how you can vary it lol
|
| https://youtu.be/2gWCNpSjUDM
|
| And here's an example of a cross over into electro-pop-driven
| house music, Peggy Gou's remix of Shakedown:
|
| https://youtu.be/tZbf2JR422w
|
| Ishkur's guide to electronic music has a good rundown of the
| genre and related stuff:
|
| https://music.ishkur.com/?query=Acid#
|
| (Though I prefer the old school Flash UI over this new one tbh
| lol)
|
| http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/
| lethologica wrote:
| Thanks for the examples. I can see why this website is so
| impressive now, it sounds pretty spot on to the samples!
| That's absolutely mind blowing to me.
| operatorius wrote:
| Evol's mixtape is such an amazing work!
|
| 303 different tracks in 13:47
|
| Link to full mixtape https://soundcloud.com/ideal-
| recordings/ideal-mixtape-eleven...
| sneak wrote:
| I'm very, very deep into this genre, for decades.
|
| This is a good algorithmic approximation of the quality of
| 50-80% of sub-professional acid techno live sets. It's a
| _great_ minimum bar for "should you be performing live": you
| should at least be more interesting than this webpage of random
| patterns and sweeps.
|
| To be honest, I'm going to leave this playing _a lot_. This is
| an extremely representative sample of a very specific minimal
| style, one I love a lot.
| caseyohara wrote:
| In general this is pretty accurate to the genre. Techno is all
| about repetition. This is super cool.
| dTal wrote:
| Compare and contrast:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83VzCP_E1mg
|
| {Astral Matrix - Elastic}
| airhead969 wrote:
| It's all about high hat and having enough plamp to stay awake
| forever.
| kortex wrote:
| "It's so easy to get acid, you can get it anywhere!"
|
| And now you truly can get fresh acid anytime, anywhere!
| Absolutely amazing project. This is actually like... 75%
| passable, and better than most entry level stuff I've heard.
|
| I've wanted this to exist for like 15 years. Tried my hand at it
| with Reason back in like, 2012, got kinda there with RPG-8,
| Jupiter and way too much automation, but it was just way too
| limiting of a medium back then. This makes me want to take
| another stab at it.
|
| Some minor suggestions:
|
| - on mobile: Not sure which interfaces are clickable but
| nonresponsive, vs not clickable at all. E.g. BPM knob didn't do
| anything for me on mobile, but worked fine on desktop
|
| - I realize this might be hard for browser, maybe with a
| node/electron app, but MIDI out would be dope.
|
| - Distortion module
|
| - A simple mix-out EQ would be nice.
|
| - Constraints to make sure one osc is always on a bass part
|
| - third osc? :)
|
| - What would really sell it is some lead-in before a pattern
| change. E.g. When the cycler starts to flash red (especially when
| they are all about change), occasionally toss in some snare
| fills/crescendos
|
| If you had a sample board, you could easily convince someone this
| was made by a human. Maybe inexperienced, but still very much
| human.
| genericacct wrote:
| MIDI out is entirely possible from a webbrowser!
| https://www.w3.org/TR/webmidi/
| samjanis wrote:
| To quote koboll below, this has to be the single most awesome
| project I have seen and heard so far.
|
| It brings back so much from when I used to use the MC-505 while
| listening to Delerium Spheres 1 and 2.
|
| I'd write more but I gotta go. Just had to say awesome and thanks
| for sharing.
| koboll wrote:
| Congratulations, this might be the single coolest web project
| I've ever seen on this site
|
| Add other types of sound (house, trance, etc.) and I will gladly
| pay a monthly fee to access it
| sneak wrote:
| Making interesting music of other genres is a lot more
| difficult to do algorithmically. One of the big perks of acid
| techno (a pair of TB-303s and a TR-808 or TR-909 drum machine,
| and some simple effects processors) is how easy it is to get
| really interesting sounding stuff out of random patterns and
| simple filter sweeps.
| strangelove026 wrote:
| > Congratulations, this might be the single coolest web project
| I've ever seen on this site
|
| 100%
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Only tangentially related:
|
| http://di.fm stream many flavours of electronic music, and DJ
| sets, I've been a paying customer on and off for over a decade.
|
| Also check out http://soma.fm
| FractalParadigm wrote:
| I will also vouch for and throw my 2C/ in for DI.fm. I've
| been subscribed since 2014 and while I have my qualms (namely
| a few stations that haven't seen a playlist change since I
| signed up, or their somewhat recent attempt to switch to a
| playlist-based setup instead of internet radio), it's a top-
| notch service that continues to please.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| I rarely visit their website as they allow you to save your
| favourite stations as a play list for your preferred media
| player.
|
| Will have to check it out, thanks for the heads up.
|
| Are you aware of their other sites,
| https://www.jazzradio.com/ and https://www.rockradio.com/
|
| Your di.fm subscription gives you member access to those
| two as well, last time I checked.
| FractalParadigm wrote:
| WOW! I had absolutely no idea about these, my DI.FM
| credentials (Google sign-in) worked flawlessly and
| registers my premium subscription.
|
| > I rarely visit their website as they allow you to save
| your favourite stations as a play list for your preferred
| media player.
|
| Agreed 100%, plus the ability to choose the stream
| quality for your playlist-stations is an added bonus, not
| even mentioning the hardware player support. It feels
| rare anymore to have a quality, reasonably-priced, bloat-
| free service with user-friendly features, but they
| seriously deliver
| virtue3 wrote:
| another one up for di.fm. Just absolutely great quality and
| fidelity and a good selection of stuff.
| gigatexal wrote:
| This is so dope!!!
|
| Feature request: be able to save a generated track either offline
| or in the web such that I can go back and listen to it again.
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(page generated 2021-04-20 23:01 UTC)