#ac toolbox

[tladb]

Puremagnetik - Synbotik

A quick experiment with the Puremagnetik Monthly Pack, Synbotik. The music was composed using the Lehrer distributions in AC Toolbox.

[tladb]

AC Toolbox and Music Algorithms - slow progress

Moving the algorithms in Computer Music Algorithms to AC Toolbox is taking longer than I anticipated. Some of the problems is just getting back into the tools and techniques of AC Toolbox .

The main issue though is trying to port a set of low level C procedures in which the algorithms are written into the myriad of AC Toolbox functions accessed through the UI.

My work with  AC Toolbox use of global variables, referred to in the program as Controllers, is a problem. In some cases I create collections but the variable names are not parsed into variable within the AC Toolbox functions. It could be I am just missing something fundamental. However there is progress even if it is not listenable yet.

[tladb]

Algorithmic Composition - Windchimes

References Computer Music Algorithms (2nd ed) by John Francis AC Toolbox by Paul Berg

Aim: Convert “Computer Music Algorithms”project to AC Toolbox

Structure of Windchimes

7 instruments

4 sections with 7 notes randomly placed Section 1: notes from Pentatonic scale, slow tempo Section 2: notes from Whole tone scale fast tempo Section 3: notes from Pentatonic scale, medium tempo Section 4: notes from Locrian Scale, medium temp

AC Toolbox notes:

In the initial algorithm the note are place in time while in AC Toolbox in general notes are place serially with rests.  My solution was to generate a stockpile of 64 random values between -8 time unit and 4 time units  (rv -8 4). The note duration would be randomly chosen from this list.

My method was to create a Data Section for each of the 7 channel for each of the scales, e.g.

Name: windchimes-lydian-2 Clock: (rv 180 240) // 180 - 240 milliseconds Rhythm: (Rc wind-rhythm-8) // Randomly choose from the stockpile “wind-rhythm-8″. Number: 10 // notes Pitch: (rc (generate-range (lydian c3) c5)) // randomly choose  from a list in the lydian scale from C3 to C5 Velocity: mf // medium Channel: 2 

A parallel section which used the data sections of the scales which constructed for each scale. This process meant that any change to a group meant that all changed sections had to be generated again and the combination had to be generated. I had hope yo use the AC Toolbox feature “Generate parallel section” which remakes all the components of the section and related objects but this ignored the channel designations. Every thing was sent to Channel 1 which was wrong. 

The Final structure was 

windchimes-pentatonic-1 // I started with single sections as the all channel version too often started with simultaneous notes. 

windchimes-pentatonic-all

windchimes-pentatonic-1

windchimes-pentatonic-2

windchimes-pentatonic-3

windchimes-pentatonic-4

windchimes-pentatonic-5

windchimes-pentatonic-6

windchimes-pentatonic-7

windchimes-wt-1 // single

windchimes-wt-all // parallel combination of whole tone sections

windchimes-pentatonic-1 // Initial reprised 

indchimes-pentatonic-all

windchimes-lydian-1 // single

windchimes-lydian-all // // parallel combination of whole tone sections

There maybe a more efficient structure but this gets the job done for now.

[tladb]

Back into Algorithmic Music

I found Computer Music Algorithms (2nd ed) by John Francis on source forge. It is collection of C programs to generate midi files with a supporting PDF explaining the algorithms. 

Some technical expertise with running C compilers over code to get a MIDI file and understanding the C programming language is required to work out the algorithms. The explanations in the PDF would have benefited from a more detailed explanation, even pseudocode to show what was happening. 

The explanations could be a bit more detailed because understanding the music generation algorithm requires an analysis of the code. This means getting into C programming which is not everyones choice. The code file is not commented well. 

Given that it is the start of something interesting both in examining the algorithms and then trying to apply them into AC Toolbox; my program of choice. 

Compiling with gcc on Mac OSX to get a MIDI file 

Open the Terminal application

Change director to the chapter in the folder downloaded from SourceForge

On the command line type : gcc <program-name>.c

This will generate a a.out file in the directory 

To run the program, on the command line, type ./a.out

The “./” is so the shell has the path to the file

This will create a .mid file for use in your DAW.