Eno with a production switch board.
As someone who studied cybernetics, or “the science or study of control or regulation mechanisms in human and machine systems, including computers,” Eno was always interested in how he could apply these concepts to music and the process of making music. In an interview conducted by The Institute of Art and Ideas, Eno says “…when I started making music, what interested me, really, was making kind of musical machines of some kind — musical systems where for quite a small input, there would be a lot of music coming out. I basically want to make infinite music machines.”
The word to note here is “system.” Many times, musicians view the musical or creative process as something that happens organically with no set rules or structure. For this reason, Eno believes generative music is a relatively newer way of making music that depends less on the musician than it does on the musical machine which produces music once the musician has set up a system for the machine to work under.
In his talk on generative music at the San Francisco Imagination Conference in 1996, Eno describes what generative music is quite succinctly. He talks of how his music is “based on… the idea that it’s possible to think of a system or a set of rules which once set in motion will create music for you.”
In other words, generative music is best conceptualized as a feedback loop. Thinking of the music-making process as a system with inputs and outputs — more specifically, little input for (nearly or completely) unlimited output — is foundational to understanding what generative music is.
This isn’t an entirely new concept. Generative music is an extension of computers being utilized to create generative systems that can function for any purpose or in any field. In this video, game designer Will Wright, associated with games like SimCity and The Sims, talks about how generative systems can be used to create ever-changing visuals and how these visual elements can be utilized in game design. While Wright showcases visual generative systems, Eno plays music he produced using sonic generative systems. They discuss these concepts in layman’s terms and showcase scaled-down examples of visual generative systems that help audiences understand how exactly generative systems can apply to any field.
Examples of Generative Music
When asked for examples of generative music, Eno often provides the simplest and most accessible response: a wind chime. Wind chimes produce an infinite combination of notes solely with the help of the wind. They are an analog music machine that most people are familiar with.
More complex examples of generative music can be found in Eno’s music where he uses techniques like looping audio files at differing increments so as to ensure that the files never sync up in the same way once they are set off. Through this technique, Eno produces an ever-changing piece of music using only a few audio files. He used this technique in the album that gave the genre of “ambient” its name: Ambient 1: Music for Airports. Others who have used this technique in their music include Steve Reich (see his song “It’s Gonna Rain“) and Terry Riley (see his song “In C“).
However, with the rise of technology and the increase in computerized processes, these music machines have become a lot more complex. In the 90s, people and companies began experimenting with and inventing various software, engines, and programs with which one could create generative music. One that drew Eno’s attention in the mid-90s was the Koan software created by a company called SSEYO. He produced music using the software that he then released alongside a book called Generative Music 1 in which he talked about his use of the Koan program. Eno’s “Dark Symphony” is an example of music made with the Koan software and “features works from the huge Koan generative music retrospective…”