Generative music is a nice way of saying created by computer. Regardless of what parameters are set by the operator, the computer is creating the final product, often randomly. I suppose some people find that interesting, and that’s fine, but you aren’t “composing” anything. Humans compose, computers generate.
It’s cool. I didn’t expect anyone to agree with me in this thread. People generally don’t like when someone doesn’t appreciate what they do. But I am of the belief that music is about human communication, human interaction, human expression of emotion. Otherwise, it’s just arranged noise. It might be pleasant arranged noise, but zero emotion went into it. Even worse, I suspect that nobody could perform this music they are creating unless they had their computer with them. And even then, we would all sit around and watch the computer perform. How exciting! How emotionally moving that would be.
I do apologize for not addressing each point you all made individually. Some were excellent, some were nonsensical. But, as a working musician, I’m headed out to entertain people tonight, with live musicians playing actual instruments. None of us need a computer to determine what we should play and how we should play it. I feel sorry for those who will never share that joy, simply because it is easier to sit in a room with a computer and have it shit out something that sounds good to you.
And with that, I’ll leave you all to “create” your “music”, or watch your computers do so. We will never see eye to eye on this, and if that makes me antiquated, I’m fine with that. There will always be a market for what I do, People will never give up the human aspect of musical enjoyment, much like they are never going to, by and large, sit down and enjoy a novel written by a computer. And if I’m wrong, that’s okay too. By the time the world decides that computers create better music than humans, I’ll be long gone.