Subsections of Introduction
Make Your Own Luck
In “The surprising thing about musical surprise,” philosopher and musician Jenny Judge refers to the experience of listening to the first thirty seconds of Led Zeppelin’s1 ‘Black Dog’: “whatever else you might say about the experience, an adequate discussion of its phenomenal character would have to mention musical surprise.”2
The surprise in ‘Black Dog’ is rhythmic; the guitar riff disrupts the regular sense of meter3 established by the vocal line. That this surprise was deliberately designed becomes clear when considering the effort that went into making ‘Black Dog’, its relation4 to Fleetwood Mac’s5 ‘Oh Well’, and something not mentioned in these two articles. When you turn the volume up6, you can hear John Bonham—probably with his drumsticks—giving metric indications at 0:11 (two clicks), 0:23 (one click), 0:30 (one click), and 0:34 (one click). Was the musical surprise so essential that it had to be executed perfectly to happen, with the risk of being “spoiled” by revealing the mechanics or trick? J. Brackett7 hints at the answer by quoting the musicians during a rehearsal of the song ‘In My Time of Dying’:
Bonham: “Well you can’t count from where you stop ’cause your vocals might be a different – I mean – your voice just might go off a beat and we’re gonna be f…”
Plant: “Ah, but if you do that, it’ll be like ‘Black Dog’ then it gives me room to move and solo…”
Bonham: “Yes, but the reason we did ‘Black Dog’ is because we counted it and you did it afterwards … That’s the only way we can do this.”
The vocals were overdubbed8 later to give the impression of spontaneity and freedom. On live versions, one can hear how greater metrical regularity is established, which allows the band to perform in sync but restricts its freedom. Musical surprises come in many forms and can involve rhythm, harmony, melody, timbre, dynamics, color, and so on.
There is a debate about the nature9 of these musical surprises, which fall under the category of perceptual surprises and are characterized as frustrating because they thwart prior expectations.
If musical surprises are such an interesting element for composers, performers, and the audience, it is worth investigating whether they can be generated and repeated. Is there a formula or method, a process to make musical surprises arise? And what happens to the surprise if you listen to a piece over and over again? I turned to a field of music I had some prior experience in: music and audio for video games. I’ll build on previous personal projects that all use the same or related audio technologies but each focus on one specific topic. Instead of rehashing the techniques, tools, and workflows I already had experience with, I wanted to use the potential of this research to further explore the specific chance and random elements that are central to adaptive audio but are also making their way into music creation apps, generative music software, and devices. These random features intrigued me the most and are also the ones that were only present as side functions or sketches in my other projects.
How can randomness be made to work in the creator’s favor and capture the audience’s interest?
Serendip Revisited
The word serendipity only exists in the English language. It was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754 in a letter referring to an episode from the Persian tale “The Three Princes of Serendip”. The three princes from today’s Sri Lanka traveled the world “making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of…”.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines serendipity as the “faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for”, the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary as “the fact of something interesting or pleasant happening by chance”, and the Oxford English Dictionary as “the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident”.
Today, serendipity is overused as a buzzword in the humanities and natural sciences. In 2009, journalist Richard Boyle10 lamented that the commonly accepted definitions did not do justice to Walpole’s “more complex and metaphorical original meaning”. This holds especially true if one considers its use in natural sciences.
It is in the Oxford Reference, not mentioned by Boyle, that one can find a definition that is closer to the original meaning envisioned by Walpole:
“Discovery of new information by a happy accident when actually seeking something altogether different. A famous example was the discovery by the British medical scientist Alexander Fleming (1881–1955) of the antibiotic property of penicillin mold.”
For neuroscientist David R. Colman:
“Serendipity plays an important part in research of all kinds, but it operates only in a special environment; as Pasteur famously stated, ‘Chance favors the prepared mind.’ In research, what serendipity really means in practical terms is that scientists discover things in the course of their investigations that they were not looking for. And these new findings are often not the products of cold logic.”11
I’ll make use of the above definition in my research on randomness and chance to create surprise, expectation, resolution, and alternatives, but the primary focus will be on the more precise definition of serendipity with the idea of adding and mixing elements from a composition that will appear on an album and in an app.
Artistic Research Focused on Creating a Changing Music Video Clip
Artistic research12 projects will display most of the following features:
- “The art work is the focal point. The art work tops the list of the priorities, from places 1 to 22, and still continuing”.
- “Artistic experientiality [_sic] is the very core of the research._”
- “Artistic research must be self-reflective, self-critical and an outwardly-directed communication.”
- “The placement of artistic research in the historical and disciplinary context.”
- “A diversity of research methods, presentation methods and communication tools and their commitment to the needs and demands of each particular case.”
- “Emphasizing the fruitfulness and necessity of the dynamic research group situation, which in a collective effort provides the closest critical environment, the protective realm for experimentation and the ability to share thoughts and emotions.”
I’ll consider points 1, 2, and 5 as most relevant to my undertaking.
One of the main compositions used for the app will serve as the base for my research on creating an interactive video clip that offers musical surprises but keeps the composer’s intentions intact. Can serendipity happen for those who are prepared and put in some effort, planting the seeds?
While adaptive audio in itself, as used in multimedia projects, mostly video games, is an interesting subject, I’d like to focus on one particular aspect: randomness as a surprise for the composer, performer, and listener. Randomness as a feature has become ubiquitous in music software and hardware (cf. methodology). “Which tools do you use to make music?” might not be one of the most interesting questions, albeit one of the most asked by musicians in popular music circles, but tools do have an impact on music making, on the creative process, and can expand or restrict the horizons of the possible and desirable.13 The reasons for using a well-established technology versus more advanced applications, from algorithmic and AI music research or even well-documented tools such as Max, Pure Data, or SuperCollider (cf. glossary), will also be explained in the methodology chapter. The main reason is that I was looking into technologies that would make it possible to create and publish an end product (video clip with changing music and restricted moments of interaction) in different media accessible to the largest possible audience: apps (iOS, Android), computer platforms (Mac, Linux, PC), web browsers, and even game consoles (Xbox, Switch, etc.).
Update: the end product is out. After this thesis was submitted, the project reached its audience. The free The Aquatic Museum app has been available on the App Store since April 2023. The album The Aquatic Museum followed at the end of May 2023 on CD and streaming platforms; its track “Souvenir Shop (Download the App)” is the fixed counterpart of the ever-changing version in the app. Album, app, singles, and band are presented on the project website, theaquaticmuseum.com. More details can be found in the process chapter.
Furthermore, examples in the inspiration and process chapters will draw on projects I’m working on, on my studies with my teachers at the Maastricht Conservatorium, and on the Karnatic Rhythm to Western Music Program on South Indian rhythmic concepts that I’m following at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam.
The reflection report published in this website format seems best adapted to combine advanced teaching research and MA research because it focuses on surprise and chance, offers wiki-style cross-references and links to external references, and also uses the same technologies that allow the reader to experience and grasp the different examples.
The literature review (II.) succinctly summarizes the research on algorithmic music and provides further links and examples. The methodology section (III.) gives an overview of the tools I used with hands-on examples to interact with the music. Interactive examples are also available in the ATS research: randomness and surprise in teaching. In the process documentation part (IV.), I shed light on the Aquatic Museum album and app creation process but also extend the research into more experimental territory. This intro section (I.) is rounded off with an overview of personal projects that gave me the idea and impulse for this research.
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Black Dog - Led Zeppelin IV (2 December 1971) - Led Zeppelin - John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant ↩︎
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Judge, J. (2018). The surprising thing about musical surprise. Analysis (Oxford), 78, 225–234. ↩︎
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Brackett, J. (2008). Examining rhythmic and metric practices in Led Zeppelin’s musical style. Popular Music, 27, 53–76. ↩︎
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ibid. p. 62 ↩︎
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Oh Well, Part 1 - single (26 September 1969) - Fleetwood Mac - Peter Green ↩︎
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High volume levels suit the song well; furthermore, by raising the volume on just those drumstick clicks, a student can play along and not miss the beginning of the riff. ↩︎
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Brackett, J. (2008) ibid. p. 65 ↩︎
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ibid. p. 66 ↩︎
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Huron, D. B. (2006). Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. MIT Press. Judge, J. (2018, p. 226) argues against this generally accepted assumption: “Many musical surprises can be explained by the falsification of assessments of the present, rendering the appeal to expectation unnecessary.” ↩︎
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Boyle, R. (2009, March). Serendipity and Zemblanity. https://www.himalmag.com/serendipity-and-zemblanity/, Himal Southasian Magazine ↩︎
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Colman, D. R. (2006). The three princes of Serendip: Notes on a mysterious phenomenon. McGill Journal of Medicine: MJM, 9, 161. ↩︎
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Hannula, M., Suoranta, J., & Vadén, T. (2005). Artistic Research. Theories, Methods and Practices. ↩︎
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cf. e.g. Stadnicki, D. A. (2017). Play like Jay: Pedagogies of drum kit performance after J Dilla. Journal of Popular Music Education, 1, 253–280. ↩︎
Inspirations
For the Aquatic Museum app, I’ll build on previous personal projects that all use the same or related audio technologies but each focus on one specific topic. Instead of rehashing the techniques, tools, and workflows I already had experience with, I wanted to use the potential of this research to further explore the specific chance and random elements that are central to adaptive audio but are also making their way into music creation apps and generative music. These random features intrigued me the most and are also the ones that were only present as side functions or sketches in my other projects.
Subsections of Inspirations
Bata Project Inspiration
Interplay in Batá percussion music
I’ll extensively use original material from two projects I co-founded which are continuously being developed in a team of four. The first one is percussiontutor.com, a library and a practice app with rhythms from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Peru, Brazil and West Africa and expanding to other cultures (e.g., Flamenco was added in 2019). A large section is dedicated to the highly complex Cuban Batá drum culture. The concept is similar to other play-along software relying on separate tracks, with the notable difference that PercussionTutor focuses only on rhythm and doesn’t rely on MIDI takes but solely on recordings by skilled musicians specialized in specific genres.
Mother & father dialogue
Batá drums in Cuba consist of three cylinder-shaped drums of different sizes: iyá, itótele, and okónkolo, also referred to as “mother,” “father,” and “child.” While performing, the iyá player uses specific patterns to call the itótele player. The expected answer also consists of a highly coded rhythmical pattern. The calls can appear at random moments during the main groove pattern, although their position within the cycle is fixed. Here is an example of the Yacota1 base rhythm.
Yacota is a 6/8 rhythm played at a slow to medium tempo. In the conversation section, the iyá and itótele converse with one another while the okónkolo keeps time. The iyá calls the itótele in two similar ways. The itótele offers one response by adding a note in front of the open tone.
This is a good example of the use of random elements in a musical situation. It is reductionist to give too much weight to this feature considering the richness and cultural value of Batá music, but it is an instance of a musical language with call-and-response codes that are taught in this way and that performers respect during play. The following example will play the calls randomly; notation serves as reference only. If you can’t hear any audio, please refer to the Why This Format section.
Flamenco App Inspiration
Flamenco Tunes Reshuffled
The Flamenco Tutor app is a collaborative project with Flamenco dancer Niño de Los Reyes and percussionist Sergio Martinez that helps dancers configure their own music pieces for their choreographies and helps musicians learn Flamenco comping and composition. The app offers recordings of multiple alternate takes in different Flamenco music styles. Features include customizable sections that can be looped, instruments that can be selected and muted, and adjustable tempo. Users will also find musical and textual notation explaining the content, as well as instructional videos and practice exercises.
Here is a looped example of a verse in the Soleá por bulería style and a screenshot of the user interface. Please note that the channel count, Channels Playing, goes from 0 to 4 because what is actually played is not only one WAV or MP3 file but a stream of 4 channels of synchronized audio tracks that can be soloed or muted in the app and on this website. The right side of the user interface shows the structure of the composition with sections that can be repeated or reshuffled by dragging. A random button shuffles the sections according to musically meaningful rules (e.g., transitions are respected):
Interakt Inspiration
Interakt: a multiplayer collaborative rhythm game
Interakt is a multiplayer immersive arcade game designed by Alex Greenwood and me. Up to 4 players have to cooperate and compete at the same time to master rhythm challenges with auditory and visual cues.
Interakt can be used as a fixed arcade installation or as a stand-alone app for iOS. It relies on the Unity game engine coupled with Ableton Link for wireless music sync and FMOD for generative music. A touch screen or any standard MIDI controller can be used as a game pad. A wireless version with iPhone pads was also designed. All input methods can be mixed and matched.
Four players have to cooperate in order to keep a central sphere from expanding and finally outgrowing the play field. The game ends when the end of a level is reached or when the sphere overtakes the players.
Random rhythmic patterns
Besides the collaborative aspect, the originality of the game lies in the generation of random rhythmic patterns. The linearity is broken during gameplay because all players have to solve their individual random rhythmic puzzles and still manage together to prevent the sphere from expanding. This demo video shows a fast-moving game session with only one player actively engaged:
Different types of music games
Music games can broadly be categorized1 as either rhythm action games or electronic instrument games. Frequency (2001) or Rhythm Tengoku (2006) are good examples of the first category of games, the most famous being Guitar Hero. Many clones appeared along the way, with less mainstream2 artist choices:
Electronic instrument games are games that:
“generate music and put the game principle outside the realm of rewarding points and clear winner or loser conditions”.3
Electroplankton (Nintendo, 2005) is a prime example:
Why This Format?
I decided to publish my reflection report under the following web-based format so that the reader can also listen to, explore, and interact with the different examples. All audio samples are loaded quickly and will work with sufficient speed in different browsers. Furthermore, different apps and software are referenced and are part of my literature review and bibliography. For the sake of demonstration and for the benefit of the reader, it is more practical to use video clips and interactive sequences.
The game audio middleware runs on many platforms, ranging from PC and Mac to web browsers, mobile devices, and gaming consoles. The regular audio examples use the following player, here with the opening song of The Aquatic Museum album:
The random examples use the following icon to indicate random features during playback: , or for looping. I also added play, stop, and mute buttons for instruments on multi-track files. Here is an example from the process section about rhythmic transformations. Three different loops of different lengths and meters (4/4, 13/8, and 21/8) are randomly shuffled, and the bass or drum track can be muted. Another example on swing ratios in the Advanced Teaching Skills section also uses different loops that are randomly shuffled and assigns different probabilities to four loops (3×30% and 1×10% chance). This is also a good test of the reader’s playback system, in case the buttons are grayed out or no audio is playing:
Publishing this content would have been difficult on a standard blog engine (e.g., WordPress), so I had to rely on different technologies. This website also offers wiki-style cross-links between the reflection report research and the pedagogical research.
The main focus is not on technological aspects, but the ones that are relevant to the main subject will be mentioned and linked in the following callout boxes:
Note
The Chrome browser is recommended, but this site has also been tested with Safari and Firefox. It should function on most recent mobile devices, Android as well as iOS. In some rare cases on mobile devices, it may be necessary to request1 the desktop version of a website. Should you encounter any bugs or technical problems, please email me, and I can send you all the media files in more traditional formats.