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Cellular Automata and Music Using Java

Posted by simoniker on from the musical-geekout dept.

Justin Powell writes "Take computers, mathematics, and the Java Sound API, add in some Java code, and you've got a recipe for creating some uniquely fascinating music. IBM Staff Software Engineer Paul Reiners demonstrates how to implement some basic concepts of algorithmic music composition in the Java language. He presents code examples and resulting MIDI files generated by the Automatous Monk program, which uses the open source jMusic framework to compose music based on mathematical structures called cellular automata."

3 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. For the same reason that lots of things are nice.. by bcore · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ..to code in Java: There are very nice libraries that take care of the plumbing for you and help you write clean code faster. In this case, the library in question is jMusic.

    I'm sure Chuck is awesome (it sure looks cool yet daunting), but as a java coder by day and a musician by night, I'm rather intrigued by jMusic myself.

  2. Oog. by DoraLives · · Score: 1, Insightful
    As with much bad music, you can listen to it all you want and it still sounds awful.

    I suppose it's all in the ear of the beholder or something. Ah well.

    --
    Is it fascism yet?
  3. Re:err excuse me... by MrBigInThePants · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Listened to 110 again and still I hold true to my statements.

    It is simply an audio "visualisation" of pattern data. (pattern data taken to include things like fractals the repeat in interesting ways)

    I don't want it to sound like man music, just some sort of sound that actually approximates something like music. Certain musicians specialise in creating random sounding music for various academic (one only hopes) purposes, but this is not what this is.