Yep, that’s what I was thinking too. Evolution could happen both gradually and in punctuated bursts. So some humans might like simple variations on existing music. Others might be more adventurous and want to look for big outliers.
Will it produce a paradigm shift like tonality versus sound masses? It would depend on how many parameters we add to the system. Those parameters might sound terrible at first, but we have to give the system room for error, inconsistency, and surprise.
Difficult to say whether algorithms could achieve those. Let’s take another example: when looking at the existing knowlegde in physics at the beginning of the 20th century, and assume there would be a physics algorithm that produces knew knowlege and results, I hardly believe that it would have come up with Einstein’s theory of relativity. This was so novel and revolutionary that the physicist community needed 15 years to really understand Einstein’s ideas and accept it. It is a complete miracle why the human brain can create such things.
Amazing stuff. Also the comments, such as “This was a favorite of my granny. She always used to sing this while knitting”.
The question is when you hear 10 seconds or so, can you tell which of the songs it was?
On a slightly unrelated note, to speak of the composer himself, whose Wikipedia page I’m looking at now:
composer, music theorist, architect, performance director and engineer
I wonder whether composers are simply going to become more and more specialised in the future, since that’s the trend in the 21st century. Gone are the days of the polymaths and of Bach. Everyone is looking for a niche now. I hear that some fields in math have only a handful of specialists, and that their work is only understood among themselves.
Who knows? Maybe the next Bach who can combine all the genres will be an AI system, since there are just too many genres for anyone to master everything now.
I’m looking for jobs in video game development at the moment because I want to work in a creative programming field, versus business programming. I wonder if I’ll be able to bring my music algorithms to my job. I want to be a polymath, but the job market demands that I specialise in something profitable.
Probably not, but still I rather like his compositions. Same way that I like the sound of the tram or escalators after a long day of working … or piling work construction on the Monday morning. And don’t get me wrong here, it’s like a zen state rather than frustration 
Xenakis was indeed a pioneer in many things and not only in algorithmic compositions.
I think that there is a need for music algorithms in the game development, but I don’t think that you need to be too specialized. There is a need for all sorts of generalists in the programming field. Often employees are looking for specialists to fill in certain positions even when they actually need someone who is thinking outside their little box. It’s certainly hard to start a career without some specialization, but don’t specialize too much because things change … a lot.
Thanks for your advice! I’ll try to develop a core portfolio, and expand my learning from that nucleus.
