Pure data is a software synthethingy that works by you connecting devices (e.g. sine / saw wave / noise generators and filters) together in a flowcharty kind of thing. You can also synthesize video.

Algorithmic composition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD0Boaq-Zfk&feature=related (you know this person is cool because renoise icon in dock)
Audiovisual drone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RoZm0bYsOs&feature=channel_video_title
Someone explores higher dimensions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu0x46tRBjw
a song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2kQ8ETzdyw&feature=related

Getting started: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkmMzqohsDo
Free online book: http://www.pd-tutorial.com/ (explains a lot of synthesis theory, i'm not done with it yet but it learned me a lot of cool shit)

I haven't really applied any of this to my music yet but it's been a lot of fun in itself. From a practical standpoint, you can supposedly use it to make VSTs if you care about that sort of thing.

But yeah, since some of you like the BBC radiophonic workshop and other experimental business, figured it was worth posting.

I tried this once but I forgot if I got frustrated or it just didn't work on my comp

http://www.blokmodular.com/ here's something else for people who actually want to make cool sounds pretty fast

I also tried Bidule for a short time but all I got out of it was some weird noise jams. It was confusing how you were even supposed to sequence things

“has used Bidule on two tracks from his “Horse and Goat” EP. “…I made a version of myself… I’m nearly obsolete now!”
-Aaron Funk (Venetian Snares)

about BLOK I'm pretty sure you can end up making every videogame sound ever just by accident and by trying every combination (having a separate envelope for the filter cutoff is a good one, and assigning an envelope to pitch)

http://www.saltw.net/index.php?topic=82997.msg1620087#msg1620087 these tracks are mostly made with BLOK

that's the one i'm reading, too. i'm up to the bit about sampling. some people have build automatic improvising beat slicers, which is pretty cool, but it's mostly been breakcore and DnB that i've seen on youtube. i wonder how hard it would be to do one that makes dirty south or new school style hiphop beats with the big stretched out kicks.

(this kind of kick, i think they're slowed down and compressed 808 kicks? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHUEfXALfPY)

this seems pretty cool though I don't really quite get it

hmm maybe. I'm pretty sure the members of Autechre have gotten mad into this sort of algorithmic rhythm generation, that styles definitely in reach. Generating dirty south/trap music beats would probably a little tame of an area for this kind of random generation maybe but obviously it depends on how intricate you want to code - you would probably have to limit a random number generator to certain rhythmic divisions or something. I don't know the terminology but y'knoww

yeah, you'd limit a random number generator to the divisions but how to decide which kick placements sound right after one another / how to create variations without killing the sparsity. i think it's more of an issue of how you generalise that style of music to keep it variable enough to be interesting to rap over for a long as possible. i have very vague intuitions about how making a rap beat works after making a whole heap of terrible ones, but i think it would be cool for try and distill that by making a machine that does it. as a cs type, i always see that at the ultimate test of understanding.

you're right in general though. experimental stuff is more suited to this kind of software / approach. that autechre song is neat.

can puredata do this

http://tindeck.com/listen/xvgr

only the voice bit is a sample

in theory i guess. i dunno the theory behind synthesizing stringish sounds like that though. i quite liked it.

while i was at work today i was thinking about melody generation algorithms and i figured that one way you can see melodic variation is as permutations of note sequences. as an experiment, i entered the johnson-trotter algorithm for enumerating permutations of integer sequences of length 2, 3, and 4 where 1 = C, 2 = D#, 3 = F, 4 = F# into renoise by hand. i played the same sequence deeper and slower to make chords. what i got: http://tindeck.com/listen/hiwi (with sampled rhodes and stock reverb) I think it would be better if i built a permutation generator in puredata since it was a pain to copy out all the data by hand. it's also obviously fairly boring and has virtually no rhythmic content.

i think that some interesting music generation stuff could be done with just subsets, permutations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutations for reference) and partitions ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_%28number_theory%29 ) where the partitions divide up time for rhythm, the subsets decide scales and chords, and the permutations represent melodic variation. If i get the time , I might build some machinery for this in pd. Since it can send midi control out, it can be used independently of the synthesis component. I'm not really sure how to program combinatorial objects in puredata though.