Collaborative and Experimental MIDI


The purpose of this page is to highlight experimental and collaborative midi sequences.

If you have worked with some type of compositional process, or have used alogrithmic compositon programs with or without interaction please submit them with a brief description of what you did and if applicable what programs, processes, or ideas were part of the composition.

If you would like to submit your compositions, please contact the webmaster.



Collaboration

Music By Correspondance

Do-Be-Do-Be-Do (Tribute to Frank Sinatra)
a 12 step program for recovering serialists

Written by Steve Gronseth and Bruce Satinover

Steve sent this to get a reaction out of me. I had mentioned 12 tone music and Steve surprised me with a midi file incorporating some of what we had discussed. Instead of a verbal response I sent a musical one. It took on a life of it's own. We kept swapping midi files until we felt it was finished, no intellectualizing over it just reacting as spontaneous as possible. After a few exchanges we both felt the piece was complete.


Twilight

Twilight.mid is the result of two collaborations. I collaborated in writing the aleatoric ("fractal") software which we called AMBIENT, that produced the initial sequenced tracks. Using the tracks thus produced, Elly Bazini and I improvized additional tracks, calling the result TWILIGHT, in memory of the Heaven's Gate departure from this earth. Twilight is an elegy to remember those 39 people.
Francis Joseph Leach
http://www.innermusicproductions.com



Summer of Surrender

This sequence is the result of an Internet MIDI-collaboration between two German musicians.

Written by Volker Bublitz and Frankie.



Experimental

Ambiotic Series

This is an ongoing series of sequences using alogrithmic segments and improvisations.


Roll and Tumble

Written by Bruce Satinover


Hooked on Ebonics II (dance embolism)

Written by Bruce Satinover

As close to an upbeat tune as I'll probably ever write.
Segments mixed in SSEYO KoanX Platinum remixed and edited in Cakewalk. General Midi file.


Hooked on Ebonics III (A tone poem)

Written by Bruce Satinover

Music created using SSEYO Koan Pro computer aided composing software.
Strictly ambient and 30+ minutes long. About 400k to download, do so at your own risk.
In General Midi format, may cause voice stealing in 24 note Sound Canvases.


Ambiotic Four: Collaboration

Written by Ante Marijan and Bruce Satinover


Strategies

This sequence was written by selecting four different types of music. Each type was
sequenced by either Bruce or Ante then cut and pasted in arbitrary ways. The four
styles were picked at random, sequenced, and then re-assembled.

Parts is parts

Written by Ante Marijan and Bruce Satinover



Variant AB-B-A-AB prime

Written by Ante Marijan and Bruce Satinover

On this sequence every timbre was chosen at random as were volume and pan
positions. There are four sections, one and four are from the same sequence
with the first section retrograded as the forth section. Section two was written
by Bruce and section three was written by Ante. Sections one and four were
collaborations.

By saying written it is somewhat inaccurate as all of this piece with the exception
of part four were improvised by turn.




Dice


Written by Bruce Satinover

Musical sections determined by rolling dice, it was a high number so there are a lot of sections that were written.
The dice were used to determine measures that the sections would take. The various musical sections were written then assembled according to the series of dice rolls.
All sections were through composed and snipped according to the roll of the dice.


Note Scaled Experimental Music

Romsong

Klingon


James Suttle (cervid@swbell.net)

Both compositons were written by scaling note values extracted sequentually using a Tandy 1000 ROM. The resulting note sequence resulted in syncopated whole-tone music more or less. All data values were unchanged with enhancements made in post process sequencing of percussion and stereo-field placement


Growth

Green

by FreeBrick (fb@vestdata.no)

I try to transform watching the plants growing fast (like on a video) into music. I use the program Improvize Midi to create a basis for the tune, and then I add and delete tones to get it the way I want. I use a lot of CAL routines to get new exciting results, and I'm also retrograding whole sequenses in Cakewalk. I'm fond of all sharp pitch sounds, and even though GM sound table is somewhat limited I find that combing all of them in different ways (marimba, xylophone etc.) can give nice results. I add a jazz part at the end to picture the plants when full grown, and the life in them


Mistakes

Immediate Intoxication

by FreeBrick (fb@vestdata.no)

"Immediate Intoxication" Here the compositional process is about not using the metronome. I use a normal jazz band instrumentation, and add a cello part. I do not correct mistakes, instead I try to make 'mistakes' and to express the opposite of what an aleatoric program could do.


Aleatory Music

Heaven.mid

by Francis Joseph Leach (fleach@jps.net)
http://www.jps.net/fleach

Constraints in aleatoric music can be either elaborate > nil. In this piece, my aleatoric constraints were influenced greatly by some music of Durufle that I remembered. After the initial file was thus produced, I improvised strings above arpeggios that already existed.


Bee Queen I

by FreeBrick (fb@vestdata.no)

"Bee Queen I" Everything is aleatoric generated, except for the first horn solo part, a few sound effects; i add notes or change velocities to make the sounds come out of the background, and the synth pad at the end. I use few notes as a basis for the aleatoric programming, to make the sequence monotonous and give it a certain mood.


The Sound of Mathematics

Prime Numbers Whole Tone Quartet

by Daniel Cummerow

The music was determined prime numbers in base 5. The digits were mapped to 4 parts using tones of the E whole tone scale.


Improvisations: One Take, no editing

Jam One, sequenced trio of drums, bass, piano

Bruce Satinover

In trying to get a realistic sound I will often just turn the sequencer on and treat it like a multi-track tape recorder. Before midi and before I knew how to work with a keyboard I would use a four-track recorder to make guitar,bass, and drum machine pieces where I gave myself one take for the full piece. If I didn't like it the whole performance for whatever instrument I was recording was scrapped and redone. On this series of recordings I employed the same method with the exception of using a keyboard to input all the parts. No edits were done and any mistakes or unique aspects of the performance were left as is with the hope that the recording had it's own merits.


Experiments in Random Acts of Quantizing

Lock-Step: All Quantized all the time

Bruce Satinover

After receiving a critique on some of the music on my midiworld composers page regarding a listeners problems with perceived timing problems and his suggestion that my music would benefit by using quantizing I thought it might be fun to take a few themes and start quantizing every aspect of the performance, I used shuffle beats at 1/8th, 1/16th triplets and 1/4 note, straight quantizing at 1/8th and 1/4th notes, and mixed quantizing structures on arbitrary segments of the sequence where I thought it would sounded interesting.
The parts were played on a keyboard and then, in many cases, quantized in different styles than the original note/time sequence of events I'd performed.
I might do this again but it was more of an experiment to see if what I do sounds all that different when it's tightly quantized as opposed to rarely quantized which is how I usually write. In this experiment the results were slightly different and caused some re-thinking of how I went about writing the music but the music wasn't much different than if I had not used quantizing.


Infinity

Infinity

Igor A. Vogt

This work containts all minor, minor 7th, major, dominant 7th chords.
It may start with every 4th measure, but can`t stop anywhere.
It was created algorithmicaly under impression of Jean Michel Jarre music.


Arachnobotics

Arachnobotics

Ron Roos

Techno/Fusion progressive tune.


Minoxytaurygen Madness

Minoxytaurygen Madness

Ron Roos

This composition, "Minoxytaurygen Madness" got it's name from the two main influences that sparked the idea for it's creation. It's based on an old synthesizer piece from the days of the early Moog synthesizers written by Dick Hyman and the Electric Eclectics, called "The Minotaur", which both introduces and closes the piece, and is intermingled with some sequences derived from various works by Jean Michele Jarre, including one of his more popular pieces: "Oxygene", along with my own improvisations for an unusually progressive, captivating, techno/ambient feel. Many tracks were retrograded simply because I thought they sounded better that way. Sound effects and digitally sequenced progressions were blended into the mix as well. Once I had the basic patterns down, progressions were broken down into individual tracks by note, tweaked one at a time, then mixed down to no more than 4 individual voices at a time, according to pitch and rhythm, and/or according to whatever sounded best, resulting from trial and error. Same process was repeated for all sequences and/or patterns, then all were blended, and tweaked in the expression editor. Best played at low volume, as volume dynamics are written into the music. I tried to stay away from traditional synth voices, and used woodwind sounds instead, which tend to distort more easily, so keep that in mind, and start with low volume. I recommend using a soft-synth such as Roland Virtual Sound canvas, which delivers much more natural voices using general MIDI patches, and eliminates that "toy piano" sound without the use of sound fonts. Running time = 33 minutes. (File size = 658k)


PizzacattoPicasso

PizzacattoPicasso.mid

Ron Roos


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