The process used to produce this song goes back to the early 1990s when two brothers, Tim & Pete Cole, built a generative music software called SSEYO Koan. It became well known after Brian Eno used the software to create his work Generative Music 1 — 12 self-generating compositions released as a limited run of floppy disks! 💾 Each piece of music offered an infinite amount of variations which were never the same when played from the software. Only 2000 copies were ever released, and required a specific sound card in order to hear the piece as intended, making this an extremely rare and esoteric piece of music.
Fast-forward 30 years… the software continues to be developed by the brothers under its new name, Wotja. For this piece, I built a simple set of rules, in four sections, to be generated by the Wotja music engine. I routed the MIDI output of the Wotja engine to Logic Pro where I was able to program specific sounds that I wanted to use. I synchronized the playback of the Wotja engine to Logic and recorded several takes of the software’s performances. From those takes, I selected the parts that worked well together and built a composite arrangement.
Degenerative is the result of those performances captured from the Wotja generative music software. I played no instruments whatsoever, and only edited some of the MIDI notes in order to create texture and smooth out transitions between each of the takes.
This is not AI music. This is generative music… for degens.