Idea for a Sequencer: Conway’s Game of Life

[fertelmeyster]

Hey Nauts,

I’ve been kicking around this idea and figured this might be the place to drop it, especially for you creative wizards who actually design cool music gadgets. Ever thought about a MIDI sequencer that runs off Conway’s Game of Life rules? Yeah, the one with the little cells that live, die, and evolve based on their neighbors. Sounds wild, right?

So, picture this: Instead of just plotting notes on a grid like we usually do, this sequencer would let those notes interact with each other, come alive, vanish, or even spawn new ones based on the Game of Life’s logic. It’s not just about making a pattern; it’s about watching it grow, change, and surprise you.

I’m imagining it as something Teenage Engineering would gin up – quirky, fun, and visually engaging, but they don’t really have the right platform for it, device-wise (some of OP-1’s feel akin to this at a smaller scale). Could be a cool app or a plugin, or even something you can mess with on a hardware sequencer with a decently sized grid. Imagine the potential for a Eurorack setup? Whew.

But here’s the thing – I don’t design this stuff. I just love dreaming about it. So, I’m tossing this idea into the wild for those of you who can take it further. It’s 2024, and I think it’s high time for something groundbreaking like this.

Some thoughts for whoever wants to run with this:

• The grid has gotta be big enough to let patterns evolve but not so huge it’s a headache to manage.
• What if each cell wasn’t just a note on or off but could also affect things like pitch, rhythm, or dynamics as it moves through its life cycle?
• It should let us jump in and mess with the pattern, not just set it and forget it. Keeps it hands-on and unpredictable.
• And because it’s 2024 and everything looks cool, it’s gotta have some neat visual flair that makes it a blast to watch in action, or even go so far as to think of it like a visualizer-instrument hybrid of a sort.

I’m just throwing this out there because it sounds like it could lead to some really unique music-making experiences. Imagine setting up a pattern before your show and having no idea what it’s going to evolve into by the end. Or finding new melodies in the chaos of cells living and dying.

If you’re scratching your head wondering what Conway’s Game of Life actually looks like, check this out for a bit of inspiration: ConwayLife.com. It might spark some ideas on how this could work for a sequencer.

What do you all think? Is there a way to make this happen, or is it just a pipe dream? Would love to hear your thoughts, tweaks, or even wilder ideas!

Also, lol if someone responds like “this is already a thing” I won’t be too embarrassed

Cheers,

-e.-

[adaherb137]

Might be worth exploring the monome ecosystem I think there’s some cool scripts written that riff off game of life over there.

[knobgoblin]

Reaktor also has one that comes with the factory library. I’m sure you’ll find implementations if it in max or Pd as well.

[Nuss1Suss]

Already a thing - I think. Check out Xynthesizr on the App Store. It’s a cool little synth / seq. Ive not used it for years but I’m sure there’s a Conways game of life element to the sequencer.

[Jukka]

Eurorack Conway's Game of Life 64 output pattern generator & MIDI to trigger, now shipping worldwide

Conway's Game of Life in Kontakt

Project done at Cornell

This Synthesizer Uses Conway’s Game of Life to Generate Tones

… more

Must be a good idea, it’s been done so often. You should develop your ideas.

[fertelmeyster]

Cool! I’ll have to dig in!

Feel like there’s an ideal environment for something like this on the iPad, where you could zoom in or out with high resolution, has a touchscreen, great sound, and Bluetooth midi.

My favorite thing about it is the way it can result in these steady states that can then be broken up with new inputs, feels like it could be interesting for scoring game themes.

[Jukka]

If you like this sort of thing, also consider other simulation / cellular automata sorts of systems, that generate sound off of physical systems.

I just posted this

Crowdfunding — The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

IOLabs has a Eurorack module available via Kickstarter that allows you to setup simulations of physical motion ( think of billiard balls on a magic billiard table ) and interprets that motion as you would like into rhythm and pitch expressed in CV, and maybe MIDI data too. It is called Particles. The module included a touch sensitive color display for control. The project is already funded but is still open to join. Particles on Kickstarter [IOLabs Particles: Centered Gravity Quanti…

And I posted this a while ago :

Science of Sound and Auditory Perception

Fractal set sound wave generator This is fun, if somewhat synthetic. Here’s someone who took the repeating sections of fractal sets ( the dark areas in the representations ) and uses the x and y values in those repeating “orbits” to generate sound waves. I’ve queued the video to a place where he starts to create more interesting sounds. You can watch earlier in the video where he explains the mathematics of his construction, and what he is actually doing. [Sounds of the Mandelbrot Set…

Plus there is a whole branch of researchers who take data, astrophysical data is very popular, and apply audio analysis to better understand the data by hearing it.

I could go on for hours taking this thread off-topic.

[GurtTractor]

The Nova3 VST is worth a look too -

Nova3 is a generative sequencer based on the motion of rovers in a resizeable matrix. Nova3 generates MIDI notes when rovers strike a wall. Rovers change directions when they encounter walls, obstacles and other rovers. You can use this to generate static sequences, slowly evolving sequences, or wildy chaotic sequences.

There are lots of controls for tweakability (see the readme in the zip file for details about the controls and behaviors) but a good way to grok the plugin is to give it a quick go. Insert an instance into your DAW with the MIDI output routed to a synth. Click a few cells in the matrix. Press play on the DAW transport. The rovers will move and generate MIDI notes as they bounce off the walls. Pattern change when the rovers contact each other, contact an obstacle, or are perturbed by the probability controls.

Nova3 was inspired by the Otomata sequencer: http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/nova3-by-tonecarver

I found it very enjoyable to use and made a number of interesting melodies with it, would love a hardware equivalent. It’s less chaotic and complex than a CGoL sequencer would be but it’s probably a lot more predictable, so I think it’s perhaps a more practical middle ground.

[CCMP]

@Nuss1Suss

Check out Xynthesizr on the App Store. It’s a cool little synth / seq. Ive not used it for years but I’m sure there’s a Conways game of life element to the sequencer.

This. Xynthesizr is great and does the Conway Game of Life thing and some other variants… in fact, I’ll screen shot it eh…;

[DoS]

@adaherb137

monome ecosystem

There’s Zellen for Norns, which is fun: Zellen - Library - lines as well as a few other scripts.

Not Monome but standalone is Ultomaton: GitHub - benjaminvanesser/ultomaton: ULTOMATON is an effects generator built to accompany any acoustic instrumentalist while improvising.

[SoundRider]

@fertelmeyster

bit of inspiration

Check out ORCA …

GitHub - hundredrabbits/Orca: Esoteric Programming Language

That’s not only a sequencer, this is like a programming language using a two-dimensional grid of events.

“Pulses” are sent out to the grid, hit cells and each hit creates new events. Can be used quite simple and very complex. It’s one of the “live-coding” environments, but it doesn’t need to learn a programming language first

[Gral_Kerkila]

Here you go. it works very well, even on an iPhone (and iPad and Mac)

ZOA - Audio Symmetric

[craig]

Audio Damage did a plugin like this called Automaton. I think it’s a free download in their legacy section now. Here’s the deets:

Automaton by Audio Damage - FSU Plugin VST Audio Unit

[videomusik]

I was scrolling down to see if someone was going to mention this. It was awesome

[allenlee]

I actually made a similar one in maxmsp several months ago. Pretty interesting!