Creating symphonies in JavaScript
Channel: FOSDEM
Date: 2020-10-09

by Steven Goodwin

At: FOSDEM 2020
https://video.fosdem.org/2020/H.1302/creating_symphonies.webm

In 1996 I read about György Ligeti’s mechanical music (notably Poème Symphonique) and started to explore the possibility of precisely timed music. Knowing that computers now allowed more programmatic control over sound than they did in 1962, when Ligeti's wrote his piece, I set about writing algorithms to generate MIDI files which ultimately became Symphony 1 in C# minor. This talk covers the methods of generating MIDI files algorithmically in JavaScript, using the ones from the Symphony 1 as examples, showing how you can turn an abstract idea into music. It also discusses the additional processes and work necessary to turn a core idea into a full album. Along the way Steven touches on copyright, music trivia, geeky tech stuff, and the philosophy of music that can never be performed by humans.

Room: H.1302 (Depage)
Scheduled start: 2020-02-02 10:30:00