There’s a long tradition of using random or ‘aleatory’ techniques in electronic music. Composers have used randomness in the composition process, random elements in performance instructions and electronics to introduce randomness.
In this video tutorial, How To Random, Chris Randall (Analog Industries, Sister Machine Gun) shares some of the techniques he uses to incorporate random elements into his electronic music tracks.
He discusses several applications (links below). But Randall also demonstrates that using randomness, without sounding completely random, depends more on the decisions and judgement that you bring as a composer and performer.
Resources mentioned in the video:
- Cycling ’74 M: https://cycling74.com/products/m/
- Audio Damage Replicant and Automaton: http://www.audiodamage.com
- Reaktorplayer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/reaktorplayer (Great source for daily links to algorithmic and random compositional tools, among other things.)
Are you using random elements in your electronic music? If so, leave a comment and share what you are doing!
Good video!
Randomness is something that adds a lot of life and variation to the music. A must for electronic music, I think.
Cool to see Phosphor on your screen. Love that VST. When I was a music major back in college long long ago lol, we had an alphaSyntauri system in our EM studio. So many hours of fun (and skipping my other classes). Nice video as well. Cheers. 🙂
i would rather programme each and every note.
Not me. Some of the best things that happen in music are either ‘random’ or inspired jamming. Sometimes the ideas that just happen almost spontaneously either elevate the music itself or create entirely new ideas to form a new composition.
I like setting up variations of MIDI drum clips in Ableton and letting Ableton randomly select between them. I wish there were more randomizing possibilities built into hardware drum machines, though.
Xynthesizr on IOS has pattern morphing based on Conway’s Game of Life. I use this a lot. I use Xynthesizr as a sequencer even though it has a built in sound engine.
Also, Arturia Beatstep Pro has a randomize function that I really like.
You can get a lot of cool effects from adjusting both loop & groove/swing parameters of a clip manually and recording that into a new clip. The results are very mild randomness, both is groove and glitching. Works great on percussive sounds.
with Ableton Live anyway…
Thanks very usefull! What is the name of the last plugins upbeat and ? (sorry my English is terrible :-s )
Hey Chris – excellent presentation.
You mentioned UpBeat. I’ve kept an older Mac running OS9 just for this amazing program. Did it ever get ported to OSX? Kudos to the C74 guys for moving M to OSX.
Thanks for the wonderful on randomness in electronic music. You can get all latest electronic music for free on Setbeat app (http://setbeatapp.com) available for Android and iOS.
Randomness is very important aspect of music but it is not easy to add in music.
Sometimes we can not enjoy music because of random bits.
Thank you so much for sharing unique and useful information.