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Generating More of My Favorite Aphex Twin Track

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Re: Generating More of My Favorite Aphex Twin Track

#132
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phrase is actually the appropriate term. A bar would be 4 beats (for this song, which is in 4/4). The main phrase of the melody is 4 bars long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrase_(music)

Good point. I miswrote the original comment, anyways, I meant beats. I thought a bar is 4 beats, a measure is 4 bars (in 4/4)? Going to have to look this up but is measure == phrase == section? Or I guess, a section can be arbitrary number of bars depending on song structure.

bar == measure

Re: Generating More of My Favorite Aphex Twin Track

#133
post #27
post #6

"Selected Ambient Works 85-92" is a quality product.

Probably my favorite album for programming and other work that require concentration. I still haven't encountered anything like it. I wish there was more.

One path to explore is to start with interesting covers of Aphex Twin works:

- The Alarm Will Sound collective has an album called Acoustica where they made acoustic-instrument-based covers of Aphex Twin songs. https://www.alarmwillsound.com/

- The Bad Plus covered Aphex Twin's Flim on their These Are the Vistas album. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeMre0Sp7o4

Both Alarm Will Sound and The Bad Plus are somewhat different, quite interesting directions to explore for other music you might enjoy programming to.

Re: Generating More of My Favorite Aphex Twin Track

#134

On a side note, saw a nice write-up celebrating the recent 25th anniversary of Selected Ambient Works Volume II: https://www.residentadvisor.net/reviews/23648 I feel like that album has a lot of potential for generative experiments. Admittedly, the album has an over-arching tone of eeriness throughout, which isn't something I want to listen to while I work most days. Maybe it would be inspiring to game developers wor…

One thing I like to do is combine the tracks from each disc, so I listen to order like track 1, 13, 2, 14, etc. Most of the beginning tracks are less creepy. Also there is a "missing" 19 track you can preview on his site: https://aphextwin.warp.net/release/68148-aphex-twin-selected... .

I do the same, small world. I find that DrukQS benefits from re-ordering the tracks even more than SAW II.

Re: Generating More of My Favorite Aphex Twin Track

#135

There's a nice website with a clean UI called 'Music for programming', put together by a guy who curates playlists designed to compliment anyone who wants to buckle down and do deep focus creative work for a while. I've been through each of his 53 playlists several times. 'Asiatsana' is one track in one playlist, but the music overall is very much in keeping with the mood and tone of Asiatsana. https://musicforprogra…

The curator of Music For Programming [0] (which is fantastic, yes!) also put together the very silly collection of mixes called Businessfunk [1], which are also great coding music. And if you try Businessfunk and decide you have the stomach for it, I recommend following up with the Komputer Cast mixes by Com Truise. [0] https://musicforprogramming.net [1] http://datassette.net/businessfunk/ [2] http://comtruise.com/k…

Thanks for this. I listen to a lot of Com Truise on Spotify, but had no idea about the Komputer Cast stuff!

Re: Generating More of My Favorite Aphex Twin Track

#136
post #28

How do you feel about Alberto Balsam? :)

Alberto has a much more 'traditional' song structure, with a specific melody/harmonies, and well defined sections. I feel like this Markov Chain process is best suited for more loosely structured ambient tracks. That said, I'd be curious to see the results!

Re: Generating More of My Favorite Aphex Twin Track

#137

Something about the sound of a neglected piano. Detuned, buzzing; it's played as is.

Actually, Aphex Twin and John Cage are both famous for using a technique called 'prepared piano', in which the artist either intentionally uses or intentionally destroys a piano, e.g. by shoving objects into the strings within the body to create an intentionally detuned or broken sound. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_piano

Terry Adams (of NRBQ fame) also has a fascinating prepared piano album, if you want to explore other works. http://www.nrbq.com/store/cd-Andromeda.html

Re: Generating More of My Favorite Aphex Twin Track

#138

There's a nice website with a clean UI called 'Music for programming', put together by a guy who curates playlists designed to compliment anyone who wants to buckle down and do deep focus creative work for a while. I've been through each of his 53 playlists several times. 'Asiatsana' is one track in one playlist, but the music overall is very much in keeping with the mood and tone of Asiatsana. https://musicforprogra…

asiatsana reminds of C418's music, mostly the minecraft stuff but there is alot more.

Re: Generating More of My Favorite Aphex Twin Track

#139

Generative music comes full circle. This side of Aphex Twin is more or less directly inspired by Brian Eno's Music for Aiports. Which itself comes out of Eno's generative music experiments.

Are you sure it was so insprired? Early IDM artists have sometimes admitted never hearing their forebears (Stockhausen, Steve Reich, etc.); they just reached similar concerns independently by noodling with electronics.

Aphex Twin actually listened to Stockhausen (and vice versa): http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2010/10/15/karlheinz-stock...

and they probably met https://www.reddit.com/r/aphextwin/comments/8vyrbf/aphex_twi...

Re: Generating More of My Favorite Aphex Twin Track

#140
post #20
post #10

I really love Aphex's piano tracks. So intimate that you can hear the pedal shifting in the background.

Pretty sure most of those tracks are not actually playable by a single person and that they're all programmed.

Aphex Twin uses a Disklavier for these piano pieces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disklavier

Also do some research into "prepared piano" to understand how some of the timbres are achieved. Pretty sure there is some "preparation" done to the hammers/strings on the Disklavier in these songs.

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