No less a luminary than Brian Eno has used music engines to create fascinating (and fabulous) music. In fact, he used our earlier generative music engine (Koan) to create his extraordinary hybrid album Generative Music 1.

Brian Eno has had a lot of interesting things to say on the subject of generative music. You can find out more about this by searching on the internet. His early relationship with Koan Pro was captured in his 1996 diary "A Year with Swollen Appendices".

Logic, Mac and Koan (or not)

Having worked with Eno we know that he uses Logic on a Mac. Koan was never designed to work with Logic/Mac, so all those years ago he used to have to use Koan on a specially purchased Windows PC (much to his chagrin). We knew that one of the big goals we needed to have for Noatikl was to make sure that this time we properly looked after Logic users - and we are pleased to say we have with both a Noatikl AU plugin and a standalone Mac version.

Brian Eno, 1996:

"Generative Music 1" with SSEYO Koan software

"Some very basic forms of generative music have existed for a long time, but as marginal curiosities. Wind chimes are an example, but the only compositional control you have over the music they produce is in the original choice of notes that the chimes will sound. Recently, however, out of the union of synthesisers and computers, some much finer tools have evolved. Koan Software is probably the best of these systems, allowing a composer to control not one but one hundred and fifty musical and sonic parameters within which the computer then improvises (as wind improvises the wind chimes)."

"The works I have made with this system symbolise to me the beginning of a new era of music. Until 100 years ago, every musical event was unique: music was ephemeral and unrepeatable and even classical scoring couldn't guarantee precise duplication. Then came the gramophone record, which captured particular performances and made it possible to hear them identically over and over again.

But now there are three alternatives: live music, recorded music and generative music. Generative music enjoys some of the benefits of both its ancestors. Like live music it is always different. Like recorded music it is free of time-and-place limitations - you can hear it when and where you want.

I really think it is possible that our grandchildren will look at us in wonder and say: "you mean you used to listen to exactly the same thing over and over again?" © 1996 Brian Eno.

Using the pseudonym CSJ Bofop, 1996:

“Each of the twelve pieces on Generative Music 1 has a distinctive character. There are, of course, the ambient works ranging from the dark, almost mournful Densities III (complete with distant bells), to translucent Lysis (Tungsten). These are contrasted with pieces in dramatically different styles, such as Komarek with its hard edged, angular melodies, reminiscent of Schoenberg's early serial experiments, and Klee 42 whose simple polyphony is similar to that of the early Renaissance. But of course, the great beauty of Generative Music is that those pieces will never sound quite that way again.” © 1996 Brian Eno.