Technoccult

Algorave: Generative Dance Music

Posted by: klintron on 29 November 2013

Klint Finley

Vice reports on algorave music — algorithmically generated electronic dance music:

“I’m a live coder, and over the last ten years I’ve been writing code to try to make people dance. That’s my aim,” Alex said. Writing code to make music has been a decade-long interest for Alex and Nick, but the epiphany to transport it into a club environment didn’t come along until a couple of years back. “Nick and I were driving up to Nottingham for an event, and we tuned into a pirate radio station called Rogue FM,” Alex said. “DJ Jigsaw was on, playing loads of happy hardcore, and that sort of influenced our set that night. At that point, it became algorave.”

By their own description, “Algoraves embrace the alien sounds of raves from the past, and introduce alien, futuristic rhythms and beats made through strange, algorithm-aided processes.” Alex attempted to breakdown the function of live coding in simplistic terms: “It’s a bit like making a knitting pattern or something; you come up with this usually quite simple way of describing patterns—this is my approach—and then use this as a sort of language for describing your music.”

Full Story: Vice: ‘ALGORAVE’ IS THE FUTURE OF DANCE MUSIC (IF YOU’RE A NERD)

I wonder what’s typically used for this — SuperCollider?

See also: Songs in the Key of F12