** 1.5 page review / 1050 words ** Charming Chaos Mark Wherry tries to tame the Electronic Cow in the china shop... Never has a program been given such an appropriately British title as Electronic Cow's latest creation Charming Chaos, as that is exactly what it is - charming chaos! Based on an earlier freeware release, the program is a MIDI algorithmic composition and performance tool featuring the polished professional front end that has become a trademark of Electronic Cow releases. An algorithmic composer is a program that creates random music based on pre-defined formulas, or algorithms. It sounds crazy, but it isn't quite as bizarre as you might think. Then there was chaos... Charming Chaos can be run either as a standalone program or as an accessory, useful for running it alongside your regular sequencer. On launching the program, the main screen is displayed which consists of four rack modules and some global controls. Each rack module represents a separate independent musical generator which can be switched on or off, and all four can play at the same time if required. The output of these musical generators is based on any one of the ten algorithms that are set up within the package. These are user definable and a default set is provided to get you started. Preset number four on it's own, to me seemed like instant Pierre Boulez Piano Sonata satisfaction... Each generator has two assignable MIDI controllers which are volume and pan by default, a MIDI patch and channel selector, and the ability to choose which real time MIDI input performance controllers are active. One of the features that impressed me the most with Charming Chaos was the amount of factors that could be controlled by an external MIDI keyboard during playback. On each rack you can activate time, pitch, amplitude, and controller modulation controls which determine which aspects of the performance can be changed during playback. The MIDI implementation chart in the manual provides a full description of how to achieve all of the possibilities. The controller modulation setting also determines whether or not the controller mapping for the algorithm assigned to that rack is active. Controller mapping makes it possible for continuous controller data to be sent while a track is running, such as volume and panning events. The Interface I personally found the interface pleasant and intuitive to work with, though a few brief trips to the manual were occasionally needed to clear something up. I think that adding BubbleGEM support should be seriously considered and would be the icing on the cake here. Everything is controlled by two main dialogs - the main performance dialog for controlling the overall performance, and the DNA Seed Construction dialog for composing your algorithms. You have complete control over the algorithm via the latter mentioned dialog and this includes rhythmic templates, which notes in the scale are to be used with the range, and how frequently the note changes, velocity maps and more. I think that a preset popup menu for rhythms would be desirable, and a preset popup menu for scales highly desirable. Common scales, for example, major, minor, pentatonic, and the various modes could then be called up with ease and without reference. The overall performance as set up on the main dialog can be saved, including all of the parameters and the ten algorithms. Each algorithm can also be loaded and saved independently via the DNA Seed Construction dialog and in this way, individual algorithms can be shared between different performances. Manual labour? The ASCII manual is well written and gives a breakdown as to the function of each part and control of the program. However, given the initial complexity of the program, I feel an illustrated ST-Guide hypertext would be very helpful and perhaps a tutorial would make sure new users can quickly achieve interesting results. The Results What you will get out of the program largely depends on what you put in, and I was surprised at how easy it was to gain listenable results in a very short time. When you do come up with a set up that is yielding interesting results, a performance can be saved as a type 0 MIDI file, which is far more convenient than re-patching your MIDI cables! Conclusions The Atari platform has seen many similar programs over the years, but the user interface, performance tools and price tag make Charming Chaos appear very attractive. It never crashed once and there are many more details to the program which sadly I don't have space to go into here. Charming Chaos is the sort of package that will attract fans of the avant-garde in music but should also appeal to those looking to broaden their musical ideas or, as the manual suggests, anyone lacking musical inspiration at a point in time. The program has scored highly because it achieves what it sets out to do - in style. Any criticisms are minor and while you don't always go away humming the tune, it's a whole lot of fun to use. ** boxout ** Background Throughout the twentieth century we have seen composers trying to broaden their approach to writing music in a search for new ideas, partly as a reaction to excesses in romantic music of the previous centuries: composers such as Mahler, Wagner, and so on. While we saw composers such as Debussy and Stravinsky broadening the existing language of music, the composer Schoenberg pioneered a new mathematical approach to music called serialism. Simply, all the twelve notes of the scale were given equal importance and arranged in an order, then mutated and this was this piece. American avant-garde composers, among others, experimented with so-called alleatoric music, which is essentially music of chance. Part of the attraction was that a single performance would never be the same as any other, though these pieces were usually based on existing fragments. Some composers recently have experimented with using computers in composition, most notably through IRCAM, a music research centre in France. ** /boxout ** ** product boxout ** Charming Chaos v1.0 Publisher Electronic Cow 5 Exhall Close, Redditch, Worcestershire, B98 9HY Email: electronic_cow@dial.pipex.com http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/electronic_cow/ Price: œ15 plus œ2 P&P System: All Ataris, 1Mb memory minimum, 640x400 resolution or higher Pros Great interface, excellent MIDI I/O implementation, capable of inspiring ideas Cons BubbleGEM and ST-Guide support would be nice. 90% ** /product boxout ** ** IMAGES ** CC_MAIN.GIF CC_ABOUT.GIF CC-EDIT.GIF