Sweet Success.

As dramatic as it may seem, I was almost moved to tears earlier tonight when mGen generated something completely unexpected. I can't really say that what I heard was entirely original or breathtaking, but I wasn't expecting it. I had pretty much given up on the Conscious Model plugin and was getting ready to move back to ChillZone and try something else. I had also thrown together a new progression plugin based off of hard-coded progressions since I was tired of hearing crappy progressions. And then I hit generate with a ChillZone pianist plugin, a Conscious Model plugin, and a Contour Arp plugin, just for old time's sake.

What I heard was a gentle ambient pad laying down two simple seventh chords. A very pleasing background. A low arpeggiated drone created an eerie feeling. But the best part was up top...the Conscious Model plugin had generated an indescribably simple but beautiful high melody. The most unexpected part, however, was how the melody remained coherent throughout the whole piece - returning to certain motifs and elaborating on them - while changing and undergoing subtle variations. The melody was perfectly predictable and perfectly unpredictable. It made sense but I couldn't say for sure what would come next.

I'll post the new sample clip in a day or two. It's probably nothing amazing to anyone else. But I think it's the first time I've really been taken aback by the creative ability of the program. I didn't know I had programmed a plugin capable of doing anything coherent to this point. And yet there it was; here it is.

I feel accomplished. If mGen fails in terms of everyone else's standards, if the generated music makes the ears of others bleed, if people say I failed and computers will never know anything about music, at least I have this. I could listen to this kind of output for hours on end. I could sleep to this, I could dream to this, I could do homework to this. It doesn't even matter anymore. I succeeded. I would listen to this music. That's all I cared about in the first place.

I succeeded.