Noatikl (or noatikl)

"Noatikl (or noatikl) is a powerful yet easy to use generative music tool that will help you generate new musical ideas.

It uses techniques developed over the last 17 years through our work on the award-winning Koan generative music system, techniques now used in the all-new and superior 'Noatikl'... Many years ago, Brian Eno popularised the term "generative music" to describe music that is ever-different and changing, and that is created by a system."



Some notes via via brian c who sent this one in:
"Noatikl is a generative music tool , i.e. it generates a MIDI stream over several channels from a rule based set up. The rules can be very complex providing harmonic and scale structure , CC controllers, envelopes, pitch and tempo variations etc. The rules run up against a randomizer as well so this thing will never play the same thing twice, but is always musically coherent and usually interesting. For creating long ambient pieces it is ideal. I run the standalone version on an older laptop and send the MIDI out to my Ableton Live DAW and then redirect the notes received to whatever hardware or soft synth I choose to use. What the program does for me is remove the worry and focus over the playing a keyboard and allow me to focus on tweeking the synths on top of the music for the sound quality - sort of a virtual Eno-buddy to play with. I am such a shitty keyboard player, this really is liberating, of course you can also assign that control to the program too, but I like to knob twiddle. Prior to this I would use some MIDI sequence and then use Live's random tool, but there was never any guaranteee that the random parts would fit with each other. Noatikl assures that you have compatible notes. It's also way easier than MAX which is for really nerdy types. Of course you can also make it very atonal and dissonant if you send it those rules too. It is Mac and Windows flavored and there are standalone versions as well as plug-in versions. The only limitations that are irksome is that receives but does not send MIDI clock, so you have to synch it from inside LIVE if you want to run both. It also does not work well with Live as a plug in because Live does not support multiple MIDI -outs from a single VSTi, you have to route it out and back to MID-Yoke as a work around if you want the plug in version, I just use it standalone on an old laptop. Because it just sends MIDI it is not a CPU hog. And finally it's not a synth per se, but it allows you to set up a mix of 16 soft and outboard synths in Liveall at once and let them all work together on a piece ...awesome soundwall to say the least and the best part is it doesn't sound like a TB303 ACID cliche"

Update via the comments:
via Pete Cole:
"Hi! Many thanks for mentioning Noatikl.

Mixtikl (coming any week now) is a trans-platform music mixer, player and sound designer, that runs on Windows, Mac, and Win Mobile. It includes a built-in Noatikl player; listen to your generative music compositions on the move. :)

http://www.intermorphic.com/tools/mixtikl/index.html

HTH, Pete"

via Umcorps:
"Some audio and video demos here
http://www.vimeo.com/umcorps/"

Tutorial - note to midi CC conversion in noatikl from Umcorps on Vimeo.

"This short demo looks at how to use note to midi controller conversion to create a system of midi control that conforms to the musical compositional rules in noatikl."