Koan Pro or how proprietary software kills music ideas

[Louigi Verona]

Several years ago Brian Eno came up with a concept of generative music (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_music).

A software was released - Koan Pro, costing 199$. Released under proprietary license, the demo version was nonfunctional, of course. If you bought it, the license did not allow you to give it even to your mother.

Several years passed, with Brian Eno giving interviews about generative music and saying that some day generative music will be more common.

And then Koan Pro just stopped and became unavailable. That's it. The company stopped developing it and instead of giving it out to musicians or lowering the price or releasing it under a normal license just said it is no longer available to anyone.

So if generative music will ever be common, these times will not be soon, because in order to promote an interesting concept in art, you do not make it available to people under the license that does not allow them to share the tool, you do not simply make it unavailable when you decide to go out of business. Why not give it away? What was the use of doing it? Just to make money?

Anyway, if you are interested in making generative music and you are not a programmer, you'll have to wait, possibly several decades. Or maybe centuries. Or perhaps generative music is something that became unavailable with Koan developers going out of business.

Of course, the story does not end there. Eventually, the developers formed a new company and now release another version of the software, Noatikl. It is under the same nasty license and of course no - if you did buy it for their price, you are not allowed to share it with your fellow musician.

Yay to generative music! Pity, that software which can promote the concept and make it grow is unavailable to most musicians.

[Nahkranoth]

Generative music tools are good only for ambient and FSU (FSU is not music but whatever) stuff imo. For other genres it's more like degenerative

[EDIT]
Of course there is DirectMusic Format which kinda allows more or less random variations (based on short programmed patterns, styles) but who cares, it's dying I guess

[uncloned]

LV - you don't click on links??

The technology is now owned by a company called Intermorphic Limited, which was co-founded by the Cole brothers in 2007.


http://www.intermorphic.com/

[Nahkranoth]

2clones:

Of course, the story does not end there. Eventually, the developers formed a new company and now release another version of the software, Noatikl. It is under the same nasty license and of course no - if you did buy it for their price, you are not allowed to share it with your fellow musician.

here's where LV mentions it

[uncloned]

ahh  ok... what I saw was complaining on how the company didn't release it after it stopped selling it.

but of course....

the real solution is to code the program yourself.

It is that time and effort and knowledge you are paying for.

[uncloned]

some free alternatives

http://www.robertinventor.com/software/tunesmithy/tune_smithying.htm

http://musicalgorithms.ewu.edu/index.html     (you can save your midi)

http://www.gustavodiazjerez.com/fractmus_overview.html

And if you want to write a program I suggest outputting in cSound score format which is text

[uncloned]

and yet another option is to email them and ask for a copy

offer to make demos or something that would be of value to them and barter

a long shot but a much better chance then say with Adobe...

[Louigi Verona]

It is that time and effort and knowledge you are paying for.

I am ready to pay. I am not ready to agree to the license that would not allow me to give this software to fellow composers who otherwise would not afford it.

and yet another option is to email them and ask for a copy

Yeah. Or ask them to release an older version under a better license. I will try it but I doubt they will even respond to the letter.

[uncloned]

LV - most people who sell software will not let you give it away.... that would be a direct threat to their business. I think your position is unreasonable given current economic realities.

If you really feel strongly about it write a clone of it and give it away. You probably have the skill as a composer and programmer.

[Louigi Verona]

LV - most people who sell software will not let you give it away.... that would be a direct threat to their business. I think your position is unreasonable given current economic realities.

If you really feel strongly about it write a clone of it and give it away. You probably have the skill as a composer and programmer.

Yeah, this is absolutely true. In current economic situation it is difficult to make a living out of a specialized software. Then again - why make business on it? I mean - make business on it while you're developing it and then stop trampling people's freedoms. But I hate to be tedious. You know my views on software. And it is true that even if a person agrees on them, giving up a business is a tough choice.

As a programmer I am afraid I am not so good. I am now starting to program a very simple app that will allow me to record and loop sounds and it is very difficult. A software like Koan can be coded only by a true programmer with years of experience.

Anyway, bitching aside, it is kinda sad that a great concept is not around simply because the software is unavailable.

[uncloned]

I agree - I wish it was available too.... the screen shots look very intriguing.

chk out the link to the lecture on Free I posted on this forum - I think you will find it interesting.

[Louigi Verona]

Yeah, I will in the evening!

[PPH]

It seems to me part of the fun of making generative music would be to make the software that does it. After reading the transcription of a speech by Eno (not the whole thing; I read enough to know what generative music is) it sounds like there are so many techniques to make this kind of music, that the guy who wants to make it should specify the algorithms too, and that would be like programming. Of course, specific software can exist to do that, but it would probably have restrictions.

I imagine Csound is a good language to make this kind of music, to the extent that you can endure working with it

[uncloned]

Actually they are doing amazing real time stuff with cSound now - using it as a real time synth being driven by mid keyboards is just one application.

I've tried my hand at it onan old copy - the old fashion text editing way from then is rather cerebral and like playing chess but what they are doing now is using it as an extremely general purpose "it can do anything" synth.

[bvanoudtshoorn]

Well, I had a play with 'Generative Music' using a piece of software called Processing -- it's completely free and open source, and really easy to work with. (Essentially, it's a simplified Java environment that's optimised for aesthetic uses.)