1.3. Basic Concepts

Rather than employing the representations of Western notated music, these tools provide generative mechanisms and alternative representations to specify and create musical structures. Users may need to learn new representations of pitch or rhythm, and consider procedural approaches in addition to direct specification.

The envl.net system is divided into a number of different tools. Each tool provides an interface within a single page of parameters. Parameters configure one or more athenaCL Textures. Textures are generative music parts, and may produce rhythms, melodies, chords, or other musical structures. Each tool employs different combinations and configurations of athenaCL Textures.

In many cases, musical events are created by selecting musical materials from collections. These collections, or ordered sequences, may store pulse patterns, rhythms, pitches, or chords. Sequences can employ different algorithmic selectors. Algorithmic selectors may choose values from the specified sequence length based on the specified procedure. Procedures include orderedCyclic (in-sequence loops), orderedOscillate (in sequence back and forth loops), randomChoice (equal-distribution random selection), randomPermutate (random re-orderings of the entire sequence), and randomWalk (random movements in single steps up or down the sequence lengths). The combination and mixture of diverse selectors can be used to create highly varied structures.