Variations on Algorithm (2020)

Sing it: "Algorithm. Algomusic. Algomacro. Who could ask for anything more?"

The twelve piano pieces in this collection are an experiment in open-source algorithmic music.

By "algorithmic" music, I do not mean that the twelve pieces in this collection were composed by a computer. They were composed by me, not as notes in standard musical notation, but as computer programs that produce those notes when run under SPUR.

By "open-source" I mean that I am providing the complete source code for the programs I wrote, so that anyone can look at the code for any of the twelve pieces, see how the notes were generated, perhaps change some of my design decisions, and then rerun the program for themselves to hear another variant.

  • For those who just want to hear what these pieces sound like, you can find the twelve audio files here.

  • For those who want to get a quick idea about what this project was all about, there is a short blurb here.

  • For those who want to find out how this music was generated by a computer, there is a high-level explanation here.

  • For those who want to try the music on their own computers and listen to it played on their own piano modules, a zip file with source code and complete installation instructions can be found here.

This collection is dedicated to all the Computer Science instructors at the University of Toronto who taught me how to program starting in 1970, first in FORTRAN, ALGOL, SNOBOL, then in LISP, which begat the SCHEME used for this project, and in a variety of other languages.

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