Fractal Music

The mathematical principles that produce beautiful images such as Mandelbrot sets can also generate intriguing music. Derek Johnson looks at a program that could make your Atari go fractal...

There's still plenty going on in the Atari world: supercharged Falcon clones are being used for graphics applications, for example, and the thriving PD underground and companies such as Electronic Cow are doing their best to help keep things fresh. I continue to be regularly surprised by new developments in all areas of Atari endeavour, and this month I was fascinated to discover that Datamusic's five‑year‑old Fractal Music software has something of a cult following.

I actually found Fractal Music quite by chance, while looking for something completely unrelated on the Internet. Within the web page for Claus‑Dieter Schulz's Fractal Music Project (www‑ks.rus.uni‑stuttgart. de/people/schulz/fmusic/) was a big run‑down of Fractal Music's features, plus masses of information and links to do with making music the fractal way. Well worth a visit.

Author Chris Sansom reports a revival of interest in this program: he even knows of one person recently who not only bought a copy of the software but bought a secondhand ST to run it! But Chris only has a couple of dozen copies of Fractal Music left, so the situation is very much 'while stocks last'. He can, regrettably, offer no support, but there have been no bug reports since the latest version (2.52), so chances are you should have no worries. Fractal Music costs £79, including postage and packaging, and is available from Datamusic, PO Box 12669, London E5 8XS.

Fractal Facts

The software uses fractal geometry — which in the visual world is responsible for such arresting images as Mandelbrot and Julia sets — to create or process music. The key to fractal music is self‑similarity, where musical parameters are repeated in nearly identical yet changing shapes. In the case of this software, 16 tracks are available, each of which can have its own MIDI channel, note ranges, velocity limits and other parameters. Pitch relationships, note lengths and velocity can all be 'fractated', producing results that sound totally random, yet are strangely related to your original data (if you didn't decide to have the software generate random data for you). Data on one track can be further processed onto itself or a new track: you can rotate, reverse, invert, compress or expand existing data to produce new material.

The results are definitely avant‑garde. While sounding random, the music produced by Fractal Music is controllable and repeatable; the plentiful parameters mean that you need never have the same outcome twice if you don't want to, though. Control can be a bit of a challenge, but the user interface is sufficiently logical to help you keep track of what you're doing. The windows for rotating, stretching and otherwise editing tracks are particularly good to work with, and the chunky little manual is also a great help.

It's also good to know that your work can be saved as a MIDI file. Much of the time, especially during your initial explorations, you'll produce strange results, but with sections that sound really good. So save your 'fractations' as MIDI files, load them into your main sequencer and extract the good bits — they can be very inspiring, especially when they're based on music you've generated elsewhere.

By the way, Fractal Music was reviewed way back in June 1992, by Martin Russ (in his pre‑Apple Notes days). He gave it a thumbs up, concluding that the software is "a powerful tool for exploring some of the more experimental and mathematical areas of music, and the emphasis is on the music rather than the maths." Well said!