What is generative music and how do I make it?

At the risk of over-simplifying things, you could say that generative music is that which is made not by humans, but by some kind of ‘system’ (a computer, for example). What’s more, it isn’t static: it continues to develop and evolve.

We have Brian Eno to thank for bringing the term to prominence. He made his album Generative Music 1 using SSEYO’s Koan Pro, which is arguably the most famous piece of generative music software in the genre’s short history. This is no longer available, but its DNA lives on in apps by Intermorphic, the company founded by SSEYO’s Pete Cole and Tim Cole.

If you want to explore generative music, their Noatikl and Mixtikl software for PC and Mac, and Wotja and Tiklbox apps for iOS, are great options. There’s also Bloom – developed for iOS by Brian Eno and software designer Peter Chilvers, it’s described as ‘part instrument, part composition and part artwork’.

More recently, we’ve also seen Klysoft’s ITVL (or Interval), a ‘semi-generative’ step sequencer that enables you to define when steps will be triggered but also has a ‘dynamic’ element to it. It comes with four independent, linkable tracks, so you could conceivably use it to create complete arrangements, but it might also come in handy when you’re stuck for ideas and need a bit of inspiration at the composition stage.