Chaos DJ projectChaos DJ projectAnna, Martin, Nini and SeanAnna, Martin, Nini and Sean

CSSS 2011, Santa Fe

• Dabby suggests that musicians can look for inspiration, such as melodic or harmonic innovations, in musical variations generated by chaotic mappings [1].

• We suggest that chaotic mappings can be utilized directly to create new and infinitely distinct compositions.

• Use of the chaotic mapping provides an excellent balance between cliché and complete unpredictability.

Moti

vatio

n

Chaos Dj Group, CSSS 30/06/2011 2

Proc

edur

e I

Chaos Dj Group, CSSS 30/06/2011 3

CSVMIDI

CHAOTIC SAMPLE

Midi theme

Machine readable

text file for parsing

Musical Genius!

Proc

edur

e II

Sampling from Chaos

Import midi as CSV fileCreate dataset of notesImport Lorenz attractor dataReduce trajectory data set down to 1500 data pointsUse 3-dimensional Euclidean distance between point A and point B to determine next note sampledAssign sampled notes to the pre-existing rhythmic structure

Chaos Dj Group, CSSS 30/06/2011

Perf

orm

ance

Chaos Dj Group, CSSS 30/06/2011

A ThemeA Chaotic Variation

• Unlucky initial conditions can be bad. Lower R values will also create more

'boring music' due to sampling procedures. The composition of the musical note dataset matters as well.

• In this instance, we retain chords as a single rhythmic event, but already the variations reveal harmonic differences. Consider other improvements, such as the ability to break up pre-existing chords into constituent notes for performance.

• This is only an example of using chaotic mapping to create melodic variation. We can use the various dimensions of the Lorenz attractor to represent different aspects of musicality: i.e. rhythmic or harmonic structure.

Futu

re D

evel

opm

ent

Chaos Dj Group, CSSS 30/06/2011

Chaos Dj Group, CSSS 30/06/2011 8

Refe

renc

es[1] Dabby, Diana S. 1996. “Musical variation from a chaotic

mapping”. Chaos 6 (2): 95-107.