# Music (partially) based on chance



## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I have this idea about letting the computer partially generate music. For example, I would like to establish different "sets" that consist of groups of notes (could be a chord or otherwise) that are played in various patterns... and then I would like each note played to have a small chance of switching to another set... then I would like to finetune it more, so that the chance to switch to certain sets is higher than the chance to switch to other sets... etc. etc. you get the idea. The result would be a sort of fractal-like music.

Some articles I just read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatoric_music
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_composition

Is there any user-friendly and easy to understand (sequencer) software that would help me create something like this? I would just like to experiment a bit. Thanks.


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## juergen (Apr 9, 2012)

You can use a software called ArtSong: http://artsong.org
Or LMusix from the same developer (which creates music based on the Lindenmayer system).

A much more extensive (and more expensive) software is Symbolic Composer: http://symboliccomposer.com

But one certainly can't say that Symbolic Composer is user-friendly and easy to understand. It doesn't have a grapical user interface and the "score" of your music must be programmed in LISP. So, ArtSong is probably the better choice for you. It has a decent graphical user interface.

Furthermore, a new software called Opusmodus is announced. It looks as if it would be something similar to Symbolic Composer, but a little more user friendly. http://www.opusmodus.com

Other tools that come to mind are PWGL (from a Finnish university http://www2.siba.fi/PWGL/) and OpenMusic (from the french IRCAM institute http://repmus.ircam.fr/openmusic/home). Both are free, but you should expect a steep learning curve similar to Symbolic Composer at these tools too).


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