[sdiy] OT: making "IDM"

[anthony]

>>I'd say that the music of Autechre is not so much random, but obtuse.
>>Music which is complex often appears random to many people, who might
>>be expecting melodies played in simple rhythm.
>
> For me it has that kind of noodly quality that all algorithmic music has. 
> It plays around an idea more or less randomly and never quite settles on 
> it.
>
> This is sort of interesting from a technical point of view, but musically 
> a lot of it sounds like not very good jazz improv.

Bingo.

> The problem with any algorithmic approach is that it's really, really, 
> really hard to do well. It's not so hard to do random-ish sample cut-ups, 
> but for satisfying music you need a sense of larger structure and 
> development, and that means introducing large-scale control structures 
> that

Iannis Xenakis is an excellent example of a composer who uses stochastic 
techniques. Soem of his music is unlistentable although technically 
interesting. But some of his music is sublime. Like Edgard Varese - who 
really didn't use stochastic techniques as such - but I just can't mention 
Xenakis in a conversation without mentioning Varese too. In fact I'd 
recommend him over Xenakis if you could buy just one album. He once lamented 
that he was born too early to really take advantage of electronics in music. 
But Poeme Electronique is a milestone in electronic music. I wish I could 
have been at the World's Fair where they played. I think it was the Philips 
pavilion. Anyway I digress... (When don't I?)

> correlate events at multiple levels. This is more of a challenge than a 
> random walk through a constrained space, perhaps with some fairly 
> simplistic Markov-chaining.
>
> Richard
>
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