Wow -- when I first opened up the article, I thought "it's just a major third and an octave, how could coming up with that possibly be interesting?"
While reading about the things he did, though, I realized that I do a lot of similar things (queueing up lots of combinations, throwing instruments at a line until something works) to achieve really simple results. I'd always chalked that up to "not being that great at programming/composing/what-have-you." I guess others go through that as well. That's reassuring!
In the end, it's artist's perception that matters. It's like a test suite for a program, which ensures that the end result works regardless of how well you write code (ignoring the maintenance and readability problems for a moment here). Whichever way you come up with a sound, it's your ear that will or will not allow it to pass through.
Some particular creative tactics can help, though—by providing more diverse, unexpected input, and/or optimizing for quicker iteration (allowing to test more variations in less time). Tuning your guitar differently, or using generative methods, as in the original post, are two examples.
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Wow -- when I first opened up the article, I thought "it's just a major third and an octave, how could coming up with that possibly be interesting?"
While reading about the things he did, though, I realized that I do a lot of similar things (queueing up lots of combinations, throwing instruments at a line until something works) to achieve really simple results. I'd always chalked that up to "not being that great at programming/composing/what-have-you." I guess others go through that as well. That's reassuring!
Sorry to be that person... but it's actually a perfect fifth, not a third.
Oh man, my ears need work...
In the end, it's artist's perception that matters. It's like a test suite for a program, which ensures that the end result works regardless of how well you write code (ignoring the maintenance and readability problems for a moment here). Whichever way you come up with a sound, it's your ear that will or will not allow it to pass through.
Some particular creative tactics can help, though—by providing more diverse, unexpected input, and/or optimizing for quicker iteration (allowing to test more variations in less time). Tuning your guitar differently, or using generative methods, as in the original post, are two examples.