Let’s start with what’s really important: Chris McCormick’s squeakyshoecore tunes may well make you tap your All Stars and smile. The words “algorithmically-generated acid” and mention of the multimedia patching environment Pd might not suggest feel-goody, cheery, geeky-sounding electronic grooves, but that’s exactly what’s come out. These robots know what they’re doing.
And yes, even a tune named after Chris’ favorite fractal can be good summer fun.
Behind the scenes, Chris’ music is produced generatively using algorithms created in the free and open source visual patching and programming environment Pure Data. The patches actually began as a scene for the iPhone/iPod touch interactive music environment RjDj, but you can now grab all the patches, try them out, and learn them, all with an explicit GPLv3 open source license.
It’s not just about sitting back and letting the robots do the work, either; you can control the results live with a MIDI controller.
Check out the tunes, which are themselves available under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-SA):
http://sciencegirlrecords.com/chr15m/squeakyshoecore/
On Archive.org / CC-licensed download page
And read the blog:
http://mccormick.cx/news/tags/squeakyshoecore
And great work, Chris. I hope that soon we can work with Chris and others to get some more information for newcomers to Pd on making their own musical creation and performance tools.