Fractals and Music

Oct 1, 1999 12:00 PM, By Gustavo Diaz-Jerez

           
 

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN
Many fractal music programs are available today, and you'll be surprised how powerful some of them are. Many programs are freeware or shareware that will get you started quickly in fractal music composition. What follows is a short description of some of the most interesting fractal music programs on the Net. Some of the Windows programs listed require the Visual Basic Runtime Libraries, which you can obtain from www.softseek.com/Utilities/VBRUN_Files.

FIG. 4: FracMus is a powerful fractal music program that can generate music in many different styles. The program, written by author Gustavo Díaz-Jerez, is available for Windows computers as freeware.

FractMus (Windows 95/98/NT). My own program, FractMus 2.5, is very easy to use and allows you to choose from ten well-known note-generating algorithms, including the aforementioned Morse-Thue sequence (see Fig. 4). You can assign different algorithms to all 16 MIDI channels independently. The program has 15 predefined scales and allows you to create your own. Other features include predefined rhythmic values (along with user-defined ones), inversion of melodies, modulation, tempo change, time signature, stereo effects (panning), and full percussion support. It also includes a Composition Maker and a Composition Randomizer, two tools that help you create your compositions almost effortlessly.

With FractMus you get immediate results: the music is computed and played in real time. The program writes Standard MIDI Files from your compositions, allowing you to load them into your favorite sequencer or music editor for further manipulation. In addition, FractMus translates your compositions into fractal images. It comes with complete documentation and dozens of example files created by me and other users. The program is very flexible and will let you create music in any style you can think of, from minimalist to stochastic. It's great for commercial music, too. Last but not least, the program is free. You can download it from my home page at www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/4386.

A Musical Generator (Windows 95/98/NT). A Musical Generator 1.2 by MuSoft Builders is another worthwhile program. It draws musical material from many sources, including complex maps, mathematical constants (such as s), images, text, and user-provided data. The program is very well documented and has an easy-to-use interface. It also includes several sample files and tutorials. The program writes Standard MIDI Files and is distributed as shareware. You can download it from MuSoft Builders' home page at www.musoft-builders.com.

Art Song and MusicLab I: Music from Chaos (Windows 95/98). These shareware programs by David Strohbeen use iterated function systems and quadratic functions to create strange attractors from which the music is derived. They can also transform graphic images into music. A large number of musical parameters are user-adjustable, allowing you to create different musical styles. In addition, you can change these parameters at any time during the compositional process. Each of these programs generate standard MIDI files, and you will find full online documentation. You can download Art Song and MusicLab I from members.aol.com/strohbeen/fmlsw.html. You'll also find links to other fractal music software at that site.

MusiNum (Windows 3.1). Lars Kindermann's free program generates MIDI files using the Morse-Thue sequence exclusively. The user controls musical parameters such as instrument, scale, and duration. The program is easy to use and well documented. You can download MusiNum from www.forwiss.uni-erlangen.de/~kinderma/musinum.

LoShuMusic and FibonacciBlues (Macintosh). These two Mac shareware applications use the Fibonacci sequence and aleatoric procedures as a basis for music generation. You can download them from ftp://mirror.apple.com/mirrors/Info-Mac.Archive/art/fibonacci-blues-02.hqx and ftp://mirror.apple.com/mirrors/Info-Mac.Archive/art/loshu-music-02.hqx respectively.

Symbolic Composer (Macintosh). Symbolic Composer is a commercial program that uses a proprietary language of 700 building blocks to compose. It lets users apply a wide range of algorithms to most musical parameters. This program is not particularly easy to use or learn, but in the hands of a skillful composer, it is one of the most powerful tools for experimental music. You can download a working demo of the program from symcom.hypermart.net.

Csound (all platforms). Along with its many other talents, the Csound programming language can be a good vehicle for trying out experimental mappings of data to sound parameters, such as those used in fractal music. In fact, Csound wizard Hans Mikelson has just published some fascinating Csound files that use different elements of fractal graphics as parameter values for Csound instruments. For example, one of Mikelson's files uses the number of loops in the image to determine the spectrum of his sounds, and another maps RGB values of a color image to the frequency domain (did someone say "MetaSynth"?). You can read about the process at www.werewolf.net/~hljmm/Ezine/synthesis. Note EM associate editor Dennis Miller's fractal image on the cover of the summer Csound 'zine.

I hope that this survey will give you an incentive to explore the vast realm of fractal music. Regardless of the musical style in which you work, fractals can be a great way to generate new and interesting material.