Part 3/3
Picking out some good rhythms and melodies from the self-generated patterns. These are only a few of the ones I managed to get from one sequence!
This method was discovered during a masterclass by Thomas Glendinning (a.k.a ELPHNT) at the Ableton Education Tour 2020 in Plymouth. Afterwards I had a chat with ELPHNT where he recommended some more Max for Live devices for random and self generative composition. One of which was the Rotating Rhythm Generator in the CV Tools pack. It has a Euclidean sequencer which will divide the number of fills by the number of steps and then places each fill (note) evenly within the number steps (Sasso, 2019). This has been used in every track for the album on percussive and atmospheric one shots.
A full explanation of this method and others for sparking creativity by ELPHNT is available on YouTube (dBs Music, 2019).
EDIT: After researching this technique further I found that it was originally done by the pioneer of ambient and self generative music Brian Eno on the album Music For Airports. For the tracks 2/1 and 1/2 Brian used a series of 22 long tape loops, one contained a single piano note, another two piano notes, and some of them had girls singing a sustained note. The tapes were set running and the result recorded, similar to the MIDI example ("Deconstructing Brian Eno's ‘Music for Airports’", 2019).
dBs Music. (2019). Masterclass | ELPHNT Sparking Creativity and Generating Ideas in Ableton Live [Video]. Retrieved 17 May 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWFsR0HT7Pc.
Deconstructing Brian Eno's ‘Music for Airports’. Reverb Machine. (2019). Retrieved 18 May 2020, from https://reverbmachine.com/blog/deconstructing-brian-eno-music-for-airports.
Sasso, L. (2019). Ableton Live: Rotating Rhythms. Soundonsound.com. Retrieved 17 May 2020, from https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/ableton-live-rotating-rhythms.