Generative music is a term introduced by Brian Eno to describe music that is always changing and never the same. It is made using a system.

Historical background

In 1995, while working with SSEYO's Koan software (developed by Tim Cole and Pete Cole, who later improved it to Noatikl and then Wotja), Brian Eno created the term "generative music." This term is now used to describe many types of music, including mixes made randomly by playing multiple CDs at the same time and music composed by computers following specific rules.

Koan was SSEYO's first system that creates music in real time, designed for the Windows platform. Development of Koan began in 1990, and the software was released to the public in 1994. In 1995, Brian Eno began using SSEYO's Koan Pro software, which led to the 1996 release of his work titled Generative Music 1 with SSEYO Koan Software.

Eno's early collaboration with Tim Cole, co-founder of SSEYO Koan and Intermorphic, was recorded in his 1995 diary A Year with Swollen Appendices.

Theory

There are four main ways to understand generative music (Wooller, R. et al., 2005) (reproduced with permission):

• Music created using clear rules that produce organized compositions. These rules are inspired by how grammar works in language and music (Chomsky 1956; Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983). Examples include works by Loy and Abbott (1985) and Cope (1991).

• Music made by systems that do not use recognizable musical ideas as a starting point. This type is called "not transformational" (Rowe 1991; Lippe 1997:34; Winkler 1998). Examples include the Wotja software by Intermorphic and the Koan software by SSEYO, which Brian Eno used to create Generative Music 1.

• Music designed or started by the composer. Examples include Steve Reich’s It’s Gonna Rain and Terry Riley’s In C (Eno 1996).

• Music that cannot be repeated exactly, such as the sound of ordinary wind chimes (Dorin 2001). This idea comes from the generative art movement. It involves using a system where a musician sets certain rules or settings, and the system creates new variations over time. An example is Joseph Nechvatal’s Viral symphOny, a symphony made between 2006 and 2008 using special software based on a viral model (Biles 2002).