After exploring Conway’s Game of Life in a musical key, I realized that my composition required more complex algorithms. A fully deterministic cellular automaton was not enough: I needed a program capable of shaping the destiny and the freedom of each note, as two poles intertwining in a sonic path, just as in our lives; I needed the music to be a living matter, not obeying static rules but moving between necessity and possibility.
Digital rain
Today, thanks to artificial intelligence, this has become possible even for people like me. So I began to do what is called vibe coding, something abhorred by all professional software developers – that is, creating code without knowing how to write a single line of it, whether in Python, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, or any other programming language – but simply by speaking in one’s own language to a computer.
To test and consolidate a coherent workflow, I started with a conceptually simple plugin that allowed me to create a rain of musical notes.
By clicking above, you can try out the plugin yourself, changing the flow and the size of the drops as well as the gravity. (Unfortunately, the page is not optimized for mobile devices, so it’s best to view it from a desktop computer.)
This algorithm, like the ones I will create next, is not an end in itself: the sounds it generates are raw materials, elements that I will need to reassemble, cut, and graft. To give shape to my musical vision, I need symbolic interfaces: tools that are not merely technical but allegorical. In essence, musical plugins capable of embodying a vision, a concept, an idea.
The enigma of division
In this case, I gave shape to a digital rain as part of the evolving story on which my musical composition is based. The protagonist is the butterfly Ku, fallen with a meteorite onto the planet Solaria. Ku carries within herself the dynamic complexity of life, understood as a harmony between consonance and dissonance—what, in my approach to music theory, I have defined as the Sigma chord.
Her journey of exploration on Solaria leads her to encounter two hostile forces: the rain and the wind. Yet what she observes is a mysterious phenomenon: the rain does not fall uniformly, and the wind does not blow the same way everywhere. Both are divided, as if they belonged to two parallel worlds.
Ku notices that on one side lie the five white keys of the piano, and on the other the five black keys: two distinct currents, two separate flows that do not touch. The butterfly, unaware of the reason for this division, is left surprised and disoriented. For her, everything that lives should merge, intermingle, and enter into dialogue. Yet here she finds herself faced with a hidden logic, an invisible barrier she cannot understand.
Acoustic rain
If the five black notes (the pentatonic scale of Gb) have a digital sound, produced by the plugin I created, the five white notes (the pentatonic scale of C) have an acoustic sound; they are, in fact, played on the piano.
To create this sound, I applied masking tape to the notes that were meant to resonate, and then played the hammers and the string frame directly with my hands:
Then I also played the string frame with other beaters: wooden and plastic sticks, metal brushes, and so on.
I had also promised myself to record two Aeolian guitars, letting the wind directly set the strings of the two groups of notes into vibration. Some time ago, I had carried out promising experiments. I thought I could record them with two contact microphones to avoid the noise of the wind.
Unfortunately, however, I must resign myself to the fact that for many days the weather has not offered a wind stronger than three knots—a force entirely insufficient to carry out my intention.
So all that remains is for me to creatively assemble the generated material, so that the two streams—the acoustic and the digital—emerge in alternation and, in the end, intertwine until they collide in a single chaotic and indistinguishable sound.
To listen to and learn about the first two parts of my composition, you can watch the related videos on YouTube:
01 - The game of music: winning or playing?
02 – The Game of Music: I created a palindromic composition
Or listen to it directly on Spotify: