Brian Eno: Generative Music 1

Originally inspired by Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels, Sseyo’s Koan music generation software has attracted a lot of attention. Using Koan, you can create and play a wide range of electronic instrumental pieces. Now the award winning record producer and musician Brian Eno has used it to produce a software album, Generative Music 1 - over one and a half hours of music on a single floppy disk, with the music taking up only 126 Kb.

Generative Music 1’s twelve pieces are all very different. The 46 minute - and 21 Kb! - Lysis (Tungsten) is a smooth piece of ambient music that could have come from any of Brian Eno’s recent albums. By way of contrast, the shortest piece Seed Reflector, at 2 minute 26 seconds, takes up the most disk space. When you start playing it, your computer sounds as if a small Japanese chamber orchestra - complete with traditional instruments - has taken up residence in the soundcard. It’s probably the most complex piece in the package, using all the available MIDI channels.

Each time you play one of the pieces, it will sound different, as the Koan Music Engine creates a piece from the rules in the music file. These rules only contain boundaries - the music can take any direction within the constraints of pitch, voice and volume (and 150 other parameters!). Listening to a Koan piece is more like being at a live concert than listening to a CD. Koan files are an ideal music format for the Internet - a very small (and hence, very fast) data file, and a quick, easy to install player. Sseyo provides a Koan Player as a Netscape plug in, or as a helper file for other Web browsers The Web players are designed to play only a single file at a time - not the whole albums that you can play and create with Generative Music’s Koan Plus.

You do need a good soundcard to get the most out of this package. Sseyo recommends using a Creative Labs AWE32 or an SB32, and with one of these you’ll get CD quality sound - even whilst running the Koan Plus player in the background. We attempted to use a SoundBlaster Pro to see how Generative Music 1 sounded on a standard soundcard, and found it almost unlistenable.

Generative Music 1 is an unusual package, unsure as to whether it’s a piece of software or if it’s music. You get a standard software license, as well as a performance restriction similar to that on a record or a video - so you can’t include any of Brian Eno’s Koan pieces on your Web pages. If you like Eno’s ambient music (especially Thursday Afternoon), you’ll love this. If not, don’t bother!

Originally published in PC Plus.