Nothing really stands still in this universe. It’s a natural fact that applies to all manner of natural phenomena – there’s always an ebb and flow to things that gives it a sense of life.
The same is true of music. We get it through the little variances in a live performance that make each instance unique: the extra moments taken on that fermata, the pace of that rubato, or the occasional wrong note that adds to the sound in an unexpected way. And we can get it through improvisation, allowing a performer creative freedom within the framework of a composition. What if we sought the same with electronic music? Let the computer perform like a human?
Music without a performer is usually categorized as fixed media, a pre-rendered realization that plays exactly as intended without any live input. In contrast to that, we have live performance, where a performer interacts with the electronics in some way, whether playing along with existing fixed media or using software to render interactive electronics alongside their performance. What is comparatively unexplored, however, is the potential of electronics to behave on their own, to algorithmically employ aleatory possibilities in rendering sound, from deciding the finer details of certain motives to controlling the large-scale form of a work. With live algorithmic sound, much like a live performance, each rendition would be different, and the placement and degree of variance in the constituent algorithms would be an artistic parameter on which a composer could create.
It would be convenient to categorize such works without a performer as fixed media, but the term is completely antithetical to the concept – it’s not fixed! With or without an accompanying performer, live algorithmic sound is inherently variable. By being variable on each rendition, each piece of live algorithmic music acquires an ebb and flow to its identity, a sense of life.
Using a simple example from my Press for Audio (2020), the opening of the work comprises two buzzes of mid frequency, one short and one long. The code has freedom to determine the exact frequencies, rhythms, and pan positions; as such, three renderings of the same snippet can result as follows:
The three renderings are recognizable as corresponding with each other, and yet no two are exactly alike.
In a larger scale example, my work Ringing Cascades (2026) builds its timbre off of a gradually forming harmonic series, with each timbre entering in random order, fluctuating independently in frequency and amplitude. At the end of the work, the timbre fades in random order. The below renditions illustrate an accelerated version of the process:
Again, each rendition is recognizable but distinct. A simple open-ended process like this, when spread out over a longer period of time, over approximately seven minutes in the full work, can impact the large-scale progression of a work as algorithms manifest over larger time scales. However such a musical entity forms impacts all adjacent entities as each unpredictable juxtaposition between entities becomes musically significant in a continuous domino effect.
In composing through this method, I find myself holding enormous power in determining a musical work’s identity, a power that quickly exceeds the limits of my control. The more possibilities I program into a musical entity, the more impactful it may prove in determining the progression of the music as it passes. Being open to the possibilities that I may serendipitously encounter, exploring each unexpected possibility that I had previously never imagined, turns each compositional process into a personal journey without a clear end, where the sound leads me through the progression of the work and I wait to see where I end up.
It is the constant motion and the endless possibilities brought about by the algorithmic approach that lead this branch of composition into a new universe of possibilities. The sounds themselves need not imitate anything we know in everyday life. To me, it is this embrace of the incidental and the unknown, that significantly symbolic of life and existence. I am but a passenger and I embrace my control and non-control of the forces beyond.
