There are a few mac-based “pro-level” generative music programs out there: ‘M‘ by Cycling74, Nodal by Peter McIlwain [EDIT: as part of a team at CEMA], and Intermorphics Noatikl by the team who brought us Koan Pro some years back. I would add to this group Ableton Live and its ‘Follow Actions’ as this can create some very nice generative compositions if employed skillfully.
I am planning to take a look at each of these over the next few weeks and will post observations, walkthroughs and such as I get them done. If you have any experiences you would also like to share or contribute, please do so.
Actually Nodal is by a team from the Centre for Electronic Media Arts. Thanks for the mention though : ) It was the product of many, many hours of discussion and debate in our lunchtimes and we still have lunch together which is nice.
Hi!
Noatikl is of course also available for Windows. I think pretty unusually, we have have lots of variants of Noatikl that people can use depending on their particular preferences:
Mac: AU/VSTi/Standalone
Win: VSTi/DXi-MFX/Standalone
Noatikl is also embedded within Mixtikl, which is the new trans-platform content mixer app we’re launching next month, and is already out of the labs and in Alpha testing. Mixtikl runs on:
Mac: AU/VSTi/Standalone
Win: VSTi/Standalone
Windows Mobile: Smartphone/Pocket PC
… with other platforms coming soon including (I hope!) Symbian Series 60 and iPhone.
Mixtikl lets you do various things, including all sorts of real-time mashing together of content together on your mobile, and exchanging those mixes to and from your desktop. It also includes a powerful synth engine and file player, that allows users to build-up and share Noatikl-based generative playlists for use on any of the supported platforms!
Good luck with your experiments!
Pete
Thanks for the mention. Hope you enjoy playing with Noatikl, for which we have an active forum (http://forum.intermorphic.com). Little did we know when we started on this path 18 years ago how many twists and turns it would have
. Well, it has certainly been fun!
Peter, Pete, and Tim: Thanks for stopping by! I will definitely keep you in the loop as I get this done. (And I’m heading over to the Noatikl forums right now…)
Thanks again.
Hi! Have you had any luck yet?
Pete
Hi Pete,
Slow steady progress…
I’m having a bit of a time getting things working reliably with Digital Performer. (In addition to the stand alone, I’m hoping to get the plug-in version working with DP 6 given recent changes in the way DP hosts plug-ins.) Probably more my issue than Noatikl’s.
I’ve gotten things going with Logic and the standalone version. The walkthroughs on vimeo were a real help. Next I’m going to try Ableton Live…
Hey, sounds tremendous. I hope you’re having fun!
We’ll do our best to answer any qusetions you might have via the forums.
With best wishes, Pete