I'm not really sure what you would use this for. I'm a musician and I can't possibly find any use for this. It would take forever to write a song in this and then you would have to mess with the timings just to make it not sound like a programmed piece of music and give it some feel.
Actually, one of the initial motivations for creating Overtone was to experiment with automating "feel". I was getting into electronic music, and it seemed to me that many of the painful aspects of EQing and adjusting instruments and timing so they don't interfere with each other could be automated. We haven't really gotten to this point yet, but I tend to believe that this is yet another area in life where people will argue forever that software will never compete with humans, up until the point where many of the top tracks are being generated by software. It also opens the door to all kinds of interesting things, like live composition of multiple instruments, or meta-composing, where you modify parameters along axis like tension, emotion, drive, and vibe, rather than figuring out how to modulate to the next key. For now I agree with you though, most of what I create in Overtone still has a robotic feel. Hopefully that won't be the case for long. We'd love to have more musicians joining the discussion though, so if you have ideas join the mailing list.
I am a musician but I can see how this is useful given much practice and a creative, well practiced ear. One can, and people have, make music out of much less inspiring media. I agree that the piano and sine sounds utilized leave much to be desired. I can, rather, see this driving well crafted, masses of sound that can be later arranged by in logic or protools. You don't have to sound like a machine ( though you are certainly free to, and there is nothing wrong with it.) It might require hacking, but that is usually required for anything new, music included.
> I'm not really sure what you would use this for.
"Live coding" means you go to a nightclub, hook your laptop up to the sound system and a big projector, and start programming, while everybody is watching you program and listening to the sounds your program is making.
You could say the same of every new instrument ever. Why use a piano when a harpsichord is so much simpler to build? (Louder, mostly, but that's not my point. And pianos were much more expensive than any previous instrument when they were new.) Why build a harpsichord if you have stringed instruments? Why put strings on an instrument...why not just bang on that stick.
New instruments provide new means of expression not previously available. That alone is reason enough to keep experimenting and building new instruments, even if most of them never go anywhere or see anything resembling widespread adoption. They expand the palette of possibilities.
If you find a full keyboard strapped to a synthesizer more conducive to what you want to express today, that's fine. There are still guitars, and drums, and harpsichords, and pianos, and analog synthesizers. This doesn't close off those options to anyone, it only opens new doors.
Cost, or being "better" than some other option in some dimension, is not the reason for something like this. New means of expression is the reason, and it is reason enough.
Erm... The piano allowed dynamic volume; a serious improvement over the harpsichord.
I hate to pick at your example, 'cause I agree with you in spirit. Your harpsichord/piano example was just... Well, exactly my point. The piano was a major improvement over the harpsi; I hope the same will be said of Overtone. That's all.
I don't think live coding makes live music more accessible to dabblers. Making live music that people enjoy listening to only takes a few dozen to a few hundred hours of instruction and practice, with either voice or instruments, and beyond the obvious a capella modalities, there's the harmonica, the borrowed friend's guitar, the recorder, the pan pipes, and so on, which together mean you can make pretty excellent music without spending much or any money. And it'll take you quite a lot of practice to outgrow a US$100 synth from Radio Shack. (Or wherever you buy them these days.)
By contrast, I have the impression that livecoding requires a great deal more knowledge to do in an entertaining way, and it can go wrong in many more ways.
Ha! A $100 synth from RadioShack is precisely what I use. It even has "RadioShack" engraved into it.
Honestly I was just trying to find some good things to say about Overtone, since creativity is always a great thing and should be encouraged.
Maybe a combination of the two ideas: Overtone functions being invoked by pressing keys on a synth, with pressure/speed of the keypress being passed as function args. (But then I suppose Overtone would be "just another synth generator"... I don't know.)
The process looks more like that of jazz to me - finding/inventing structure & theme, reconceptualising both, collaboratively developing derived forms and then riffing on those for performance.
Unlike songwriting, that's a musical process that's always come naturally to me and I use almost exactly the same mindset when I'm on form as a developer too. I don't know if this a common experience.
From the traditional perspective of composing/songwriting or performance using acoustic instruments, this would probably seem useless. But there is a whole world of folks obsessed with coding music and instruments, check out Chuck, CSound, Max/MSP or Supercollider (which this uses as it's audio backend).
I like to think of projects like this as experimentation in technology-as-art. Even if the sound itself isn't what I would use to write songs, I still find it very satisfying to watch someone write out Lisp/Clojure code and hear organized sound come back. And I'm sure that is amplified by a million for the person who actually created this themselves!
Generative / algorithmic music is its own world. I'm a musician too and I can't imagine being very expressive (and musical) with this compared to my shakuhachi or doumbek. I have a hard time imagining how this could be used in live improvisation vs something like Ableton. But this type of music is really its own thing, and I don't presume to understand it.
Comments
I'm not really sure what you would use this for. I'm a musician and I can't possibly find any use for this. It would take forever to write a song in this and then you would have to mess with the timings just to make it not sound like a programmed piece of music and give it some feel.
Actually, one of the initial motivations for creating Overtone was to experiment with automating "feel". I was getting into electronic music, and it seemed to me that many of the painful aspects of EQing and adjusting instruments and timing so they don't interfere with each other could be automated. We haven't really gotten to this point yet, but I tend to believe that this is yet another area in life where people will argue forever that software will never compete with humans, up until the point where many of the top tracks are being generated by software. It also opens the door to all kinds of interesting things, like live composition of multiple instruments, or meta-composing, where you modify parameters along axis like tension, emotion, drive, and vibe, rather than figuring out how to modulate to the next key. For now I agree with you though, most of what I create in Overtone still has a robotic feel. Hopefully that won't be the case for long. We'd love to have more musicians joining the discussion though, so if you have ideas join the mailing list.
I am a musician but I can see how this is useful given much practice and a creative, well practiced ear. One can, and people have, make music out of much less inspiring media. I agree that the piano and sine sounds utilized leave much to be desired. I can, rather, see this driving well crafted, masses of sound that can be later arranged by in logic or protools. You don't have to sound like a machine ( though you are certainly free to, and there is nothing wrong with it.) It might require hacking, but that is usually required for anything new, music included.
> I'm not really sure what you would use this for.
"Live coding" means you go to a nightclub, hook your laptop up to the sound system and a big projector, and start programming, while everybody is watching you program and listening to the sounds your program is making.
Almost like... a synth.
Implying that this isn't a synth?
Mm, I didn't mean to come off as a dick. Overtone is cool as hell, and is worthy of a lot of respect.
My point was, there's a reason why musicians often use "a box with a bigass row of large physical keys" to do this sort of thing.
That said, a synth costs thousands of dollars; so I love the idea of Overtone making live music more accessible to "dabblers" like me.
( Unfortunately, a MacBook also costs thousands of dollars, and I've given up hoping people still care about Windows. =) )
You could say the same of every new instrument ever. Why use a piano when a harpsichord is so much simpler to build? (Louder, mostly, but that's not my point. And pianos were much more expensive than any previous instrument when they were new.) Why build a harpsichord if you have stringed instruments? Why put strings on an instrument...why not just bang on that stick.
New instruments provide new means of expression not previously available. That alone is reason enough to keep experimenting and building new instruments, even if most of them never go anywhere or see anything resembling widespread adoption. They expand the palette of possibilities.
If you find a full keyboard strapped to a synthesizer more conducive to what you want to express today, that's fine. There are still guitars, and drums, and harpsichords, and pianos, and analog synthesizers. This doesn't close off those options to anyone, it only opens new doors.
Cost, or being "better" than some other option in some dimension, is not the reason for something like this. New means of expression is the reason, and it is reason enough.
Erm... The piano allowed dynamic volume; a serious improvement over the harpsichord.
I hate to pick at your example, 'cause I agree with you in spirit. Your harpsichord/piano example was just... Well, exactly my point. The piano was a major improvement over the harpsi; I hope the same will be said of Overtone. That's all.
I don't think live coding makes live music more accessible to dabblers. Making live music that people enjoy listening to only takes a few dozen to a few hundred hours of instruction and practice, with either voice or instruments, and beyond the obvious a capella modalities, there's the harmonica, the borrowed friend's guitar, the recorder, the pan pipes, and so on, which together mean you can make pretty excellent music without spending much or any money. And it'll take you quite a lot of practice to outgrow a US$100 synth from Radio Shack. (Or wherever you buy them these days.)
By contrast, I have the impression that livecoding requires a great deal more knowledge to do in an entertaining way, and it can go wrong in many more ways.
Ha! A $100 synth from RadioShack is precisely what I use. It even has "RadioShack" engraved into it.
Honestly I was just trying to find some good things to say about Overtone, since creativity is always a great thing and should be encouraged.
Maybe a combination of the two ideas: Overtone functions being invoked by pressing keys on a synth, with pressure/speed of the keypress being passed as function args. (But then I suppose Overtone would be "just another synth generator"... I don't know.)
The possibilities of algorithmic music are different from the possibilities of direct human performance.
I'm also a musician, but ...
The process looks more like that of jazz to me - finding/inventing structure & theme, reconceptualising both, collaboratively developing derived forms and then riffing on those for performance.
Unlike songwriting, that's a musical process that's always come naturally to me and I use almost exactly the same mindset when I'm on form as a developer too. I don't know if this a common experience.
From the traditional perspective of composing/songwriting or performance using acoustic instruments, this would probably seem useless. But there is a whole world of folks obsessed with coding music and instruments, check out Chuck, CSound, Max/MSP or Supercollider (which this uses as it's audio backend).
I like to think of projects like this as experimentation in technology-as-art. Even if the sound itself isn't what I would use to write songs, I still find it very satisfying to watch someone write out Lisp/Clojure code and hear organized sound come back. And I'm sure that is amplified by a million for the person who actually created this themselves!
Generative / algorithmic music is its own world. I'm a musician too and I can't imagine being very expressive (and musical) with this compared to my shakuhachi or doumbek. I have a hard time imagining how this could be used in live improvisation vs something like Ableton. But this type of music is really its own thing, and I don't presume to understand it.
Something that I found interesting, a video game approach to music: http://kotaku.com/5847212/compose-your-own-musical-villages-...
Ok, I just saw the link someone posted to "This Binary Universe." I stand corrected: you can make some pretty amazing music this way. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve8WaGmyhfI