Musica Ex Nihilo

From the album Fourfold, this song is entirely human-generated (arpeggiator on a Korg TR Workstation). The video, on the other hand, is generative AI (Fireframe) with the hand of the artist tipping the scales at different points to change trajectories and themes. It's the evolution of civilization from the near future to the distant future. With robots, mutants, and kaiju.

Primordial Divide (Music Video) From the album Fourfold, this song is entirely human-generated (arpeggiator on a Korg TR Workstation). The video, on the other hand, is generative AI (Firefr...

Here is the music video for Expedition to Liminal Lands from the album Reflections on Sound and Space. Though the music is all human, an A.I. app (Fireframe) was used to generate the video using the title as the main prompt. It's a journey through the dreamscape from the depths of the abyss to the heights of the heavenly bodies.

Expedition to Liminal Lands Music video for Expedition to Liminal Lands from the album Reflections on Sound and Space by Musica Ex Nihilo. Though the music is all human, I used an A.I. ...

25 countries. I'm global, baby.

Combining auditory and visual echoes, this is a performance of three identical individuals, displaced in time. You should be able to hear a separate sound coming from each image.

Dark Matter Dark Matter by Musica Ex Nihilo.Combining auditory and visual echoes, this is a performance of three identical individuals, displaced in time. You should be ...

The new album came out this weekend and is named Reflections on Sound and Space. It consists of six previously released songs and eight new songs.

One of the concepts of the album is spatial minimalism. I experiment with echo effects and perceived spatial location to provide a listening experience that draws attention to the sound source as much as the music itself. The first eight songs move along four points on a line, either from left to right or from right to left. The next five songs move around your head along eight points on a circle, at different speeds and with different starting points. Listen with headphones for best effect.

The final song Temporal Disruption is an auditory timepiece or acoustic clock. The location of the music in your auditory field appears to move around your head at the exact same rate as the second hand on a stopwatch. If you start a timer and the song at the same time, you will be able to tell where the sound source is by looking at the second hand, or you can tell how much time has passed in the song by counting the number of times the sound source has gone around your head. At least, until the temporal consistency is temporarily shattered by spatial experimentation, though the spatial location of the music eventually becomes resynchronized with the second hand by the end of the song. The echo effects are also synchronous with the steady beat of terrestrial time, with the added side effect that the tempo is at the same rate as a crosswalk light.

Some of the songs are singles with their own cover art, and I went ahead and used machine learning to generate cover art for the remaining ones as well, so each song has a corresponding image associated with it. I arranged all of those pictures and put them into a single image and ran that image through the algorithm with the keywords ‘future music’. I then took the resultant image and put it back through the algorithm about ten times to see what would emerge. And of course, I made a PPT so you can see the progression (plus a bonus image at the end that’s the natural next step in the Uncanny Valley), here’s the link if you’re curious:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1lgAs6TqJIr_C-tm5W57hkVRWKr-jUmPS3lytUW3nhmE

And below, you can see a before and after image. Wild, huh?

I also made some videos that are essentially a peek inside the black box of machine learning – you can see a rapid-fire succession of images representing the process of arriving at a final product. They can be found on the page.

You can find the album on all the streaming platforms. Here are the links for youtube and spotify.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lcbYXgGGwFhFDDwmVhr55Z0HR8nwN3nKA
https://open.spotify.com/album/6W2Dn93S1RiRS0d6wiYKLu

The new album comes out 5/12/23 - Reflections on Sound and Space. Some of the songs are singles with their own cover art. I went ahead and made cover art for the remaining ones as well. Then I ran them through a machine learning algorithm to make a video. The song name corresponding to this image is Trifurcation. Stay tuned for the remaining song art!

Here's one of my B-sides: Robot Union. It reminds me of two robots doing this weird, symmetric dance.

Robot Union Listen to Robot Union by Musica Ex Nihilo on

New Release December! This Is Not a Bamboo Forest is another 3D audio track, moving from over to the left, through your brain, and coming out your right ear. It reminds me of walking through a bamboo forest near dusk, trying to race the darkness back to the entrance before the path disappears, with the highest parts of the bamboo swaying in the breeze making a melodic hollow wooden knocking sound. Of course, it is actually a synthesizer using a virtual marimba instrument with echo effects.

So, I took the idea of it not being an actual bamboo forest and put that phrase (‘This Is Not a Bamboo Forest’) into a machine learning image generator. There were many options (e.g., surrealist Magritte-ish forestscapes) , but I settled on the one that seemed the most beautiful and that seemed to capture the essence of the song. And boom, instant cover art. I was also able to render it into a short 3D video for Spotify’s Canvas feature, so if you’re on your phone and you go to the song and look at the image, it looks like you are actually moving through the bamboo forest. Sort of. And only when you listen using a phone. But still, cool. Here’s that link:
https://open.spotify.com/track/7fisxcPQGCdgqIsX7q6BqD

You can find the song on all the streaming platforms. Here is the link on youtube for quick access:
https://youtu.be/Pd_W-o8fdPM

This Is Not a Bamboo Forest Provided to YouTube by CDBabyThis Is Not a Bamboo Forest · Musica Ex NihiloThis Is Not a Bamboo Forest℗ 2022 Musica Ex NihiloReleased on: 2022-10-21Auto-gene...

Check out my Soundcloud for all the alternate takes, B-sides, unfinished projects, and musical experiments.

Musica Ex Nihilo Listen to Musica Ex Nihilo | SoundCloud is an audio platform that lets you listen to what you love and share the sounds you create.

20 countries! Wooot!

I forgot to post a single I released a while ago, but really I just want to talk about the album art. The song and art are called Primordial Divide, now part of the album Fourfold.

Regarding the bottom-right half of the image, the bottom-most line of pixels corresponds to the first 256 prime numbers. The second from the bottom is the difference between consecutive prime numbers. The third is the difference between the difference between consecutive prime numbers, and so on all the way up to the top. If you color the 0’s one color and the 2’s another color, and anything greater than 2 a third color, then you get the image you see. Not exactly a pattern, but there’s some interesting emergent behavior that seems to barely elude rigorous analysis. It’s like the pattern is right around the corner, but you can’t quite see it. You ever had a lucid dream? Where you know you’re dreaming? And then you know something’s right around the corner, but you don’t know exactly what it is (pro tip: you can create what you want to see in that dreamscape. The trick is to think of something you can’t see directly, like right around the corner). Anyway, you can see various sizes of triangles and what look like inverse or negative triangles – if you blur your eyes, it looks like a 3D mathscape. Don’t even get me started on the crimson mathemagma arising out of the primal abyss. That’s where the mysteries lie.

The top left half is the result of applying that same method of differencing, but only to a static row of 2’s (instead of increasing primes), creating a recursive pattern called Sierpinski’s Gasket (or Triangle).

For all you non-streamers out there, you can now download my music directly from bandcamp. Check it out and follow for future releases. So far just my initial single (Dissyncopation) and EP (Infinite Echo) are available, but I'll be updating with my other releases soon.

Musica Ex Nihilo I explore the multidimensional structure at the nexus of music, math, and computation.

Check out my full-length debut album, Fourfold (by Musica Ex Nihilo). I suppose you would call this my first full-length album release (my first ‘album’ was only 17 minutes long; this one clocks in at 53). If you’ve been following my progress, thank you for making it this far with me on my musical journey. Half of the songs are new releases, the other half are previously released singles (yes, I’m trying to play the algorithms).

I’m going to start a new email list - if you want to hear directly about my fantastical melodic explorations and computational approaches, as well as new music releases, let me know. This is a serious decision you’re going to make, so put some good thought into it. Once you are on the Musica Ex Nihilo update list, it is for eternity.

“Fourfold”, the name of the album, is a codeword I used for a particular pattern of playing I developed – using echoes to make four of the same sound spaced two seconds apart. (In my next album, I separate those four instances into different locations in your auditory field. You can see the effect in my singles Fourfold Path and Spirit.) “Fourfold” also refers to a melodic pattern I tend to play within that style. You can hear the pattern explicitly in the end of the title track (yes, Fourfold, it’s all very confusing, thank you poor planning ahead). The new tracks are Phenomena, The Space Between, Noumena, Synergy, A.I. Blues, and Terminal Velocity.

In the second half of the album, I rely on more automated processes – more of an ambient than a jazz approach. The final song (Onehundredthousand) provides a conceptual link to my next album - the second half of the song veers off into crazy sonic movement around your auditory field as robots whisper sweet nothings into your ears. Next album comes out probably in the winter. It may give you some relief when you’re stuck inside because of the COVID surge (Winter is coming!).

You can find the album on all the streaming platforms. Here are the links for youtube, spotify, and my musician page on facebook.

https://youtu.be/xCeyvAr-eRw
https://www.facebook.com/musicaexnihilo
https://open.spotify.com/album/0xrlNnRBMcNsjIbSKukBqN

Fourfold Musica Ex Nihilo · Album · 2022 · 13 songs.

I've been thinking about community and how our connections with other people have changed lately. I also like math, A.I., and music. So let's combine all four: a community of mathemusical robots.

If you want to be a part of the project, all you have to do is tell me. I'll assign a random number to your name, and the digits of that number will be parameters in a work of music. Some people will be melodies, some will be transformations or operations, and some will work on the song as a whole. As more people join the project, the song grows. I will post versions of the song as its development progresses.

Let's name the song Legion, and make it so. If you want to participate, you can post here or DM or however you want to let me know. Then, you will become immortal through song.

The title of my new track is unrelated to the song itself. It should really be ‘Emergent Robot Language Experience’ or something, but I wanted to see if I could find out the maximum song length allowed without having to google it. I just go to the platform, copy and paste the title as displayed, and then count the words. The original title is actually 100,000 “OneHundredThousand”s (1.8 million characters), but the max allowed by CDBaby is 255 characters, so that’s the current max I’m stuck with.

The shortened title is OneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOne.



If you want the full title, message me and I'll respond with it.

You can find it on all the streaming platforms. Here are the links for youtube and spotify.

https://youtu.be/At0wPu7SEWA
https://open.spotify.com/album/3mbJaTKR0yQpZ8lXYqPYiZ

OneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredThousandOneHundredTho... Musica Ex Nihilo · Single · 2022 · 1 songs.

My new track is my second release using spatial audio. It consists of four sound sources at different points along a line, from R to L. In the beginning, I attempt to blur the distinction between the individual points with a gradual increase/decrease in pitch. The waves of sound that result make it seem like sound is coming from all over, instead of just from those four points. The remainder of the song draws attention back to the distinct nature of the original sound sources.

Check it out! You can find it on all the streaming platforms. Here are the links for youtube and spotify.

https://youtu.be/awaY7Kd3uO8
https://open.spotify.com/track/7Asc6a35Rdahn9yVfrn8IF

Spirit Musica Ex Nihilo · Song · 2022