Platonic Score

The Platonic Score tries to create music that is free from all the human cultural assumptions concerning music. It does this by using the full range of possibilities provided by the underlying technology (Csound, Lua, and The Platonic Music Engine) without attempting to constrain the results according to any aesthetic prescription.

The software uses four simple synthesized instruments available from Csound for the music.

After specifying the number of sonic events to generate (we use 15 for all the examples here) you are confronted with a choice: listen to them horizontally or vertically.

Horizontally plays each sonic event one after the other while vertically means they are all played during the same time period (though their specific start and stop times will vary).

An interesting consequence of using the underlying technology to its fullest is that either of these approaches will, using a tempo of 60 bpm, result in a piece lasting at least 200 years.

Csound file for horizontal version

Csound file for vertical version

If you don’t have the patience for the above, we have options.

Setting the audio_len value to something other than “max” will result in that many seconds being generated instead of the full 200+ years.

First 20 seconds of horizontal version

First 20 seconds of vertical version

In the second one you don’t hear anything. This is because the first sound isn’t scheduled to occur till some 288 days from the point the music starts playing.

Instead of just recording the first x number of seconds we can employ the Time Lord option which will generate an x number of seconds of music starting at some point where the software (you can call it a Tardis if you want) knows something interesting is going on. It’s like you’re travelling in time. Sort of.

20 seconds of music from somewhere within the vertical version

The final option is based loosely on an idea from the Hebrew Bible in Psalms and from 2 Peter in the Christian New Testament where it is said that a thousand years is like a day to God. The idea is that instead of listening for 200+ years the software will compress it to as few seconds you want. It does this by scaling the start times and durations of all the sonic events to fit within the time length you’ve chosen.

20 seconds of compressed music from the horizontal version

20 seconds of compressed music from the vertical version