Wotja Music

Wotja is a powerful system for on-device generation of Live Generative Music & MIDI. It has a long and distinguished history of continuous development.

'Wotja Music' AKA 'Generative music' (sometimes referred to as algorithmic music, stochastic music or aleatoric music) relies a lot on the 'magic fluidity' of chance. It is akin to cleansing musical rain, which makes it great for relaxation, meditiation, contemplation etc.

It is generated live and it is YOUR MIND that contextualises and interprets it. It is also where any 'emergent' behaviour is experienced (your creative mind is incredibly good at finding connections between things).

Wotja can also generate melodic seeds from text (text-to-music) and so Wotja Music can also be considered as 'Reflective Music'. Other terms that we have used include Inmo Music, Mindful Music and long ago at the very beginning of our journey, Koan Music.

Wotja can also use note patterns and lets you add some underpinning structure, but it is primarily a system to let you embrace and explore chance in music.

'Generative AI' music is something altogether different.

You can of course create the simplest form of generative music from random shuffling of pre-composed/pre-recorded elements, but most people think of it as some form of live-generated music.

This is why today we also use a number of alternative terms to describe what it does: InMo Music, Reflective Music, Text-to-Music, Mindful Music etc.

Wotja Music Engine

Assuming you want to get a bit more interesting and granular, you need to use a music engine to real-time compose & generate the musical notes used. Such an engine will use a range of musical parameters to compose its live (generally MIDI) notes, meaning that if you change the parameters the ensuing composition will change, too.

In the case of Wotja, this engine is called the Wotja Music Engine (WME), and it uses a combination of AI techniques & heuristics crafted and honed over 30+ years. At the core of its operation are a key set of Rules.

Wotja Audio Engine

There is another important factor for composed Generative Music however, and that is that the notes need to be turned into sound via some kind of audio/sound generator. There are many, many sound units and FX units that can be driven by MIDI.

In the case of Wotja, it has an (optional) integral audio/sound engine, the Wotja Audio Engine (WAE), with a range of sound generators and FX.

Why Generative Music?

Many people find generative music systems to be incredibly interesting. Musicians to academics enjoy using them, and creating with them. They can generate some completely unexpected, but wonderful, results.

You might think that generative music, being generated by a system, would always sound formulaic and impersonal.

What you find, instead, is that artists using their skill and judgment with parameter configurations, sound design and other choices can impose their own personality on the output, providing rich rewards for listeners through unique and live experiences.

How to make Generative Music?

It's simple, and you can be making it, for free, in seconds.

• Download Wotja (it's free!) for your platform, e.g. for iOS, macOS, Windows, Android and install it as necessary.
• See the Play a Flow tutorial, or:
  • Launch the app, select the Flows tab (one of 4 main tabs in the Documents Screen) and then tap on any of the Flow thumbnails.
  • Wotja will then start creating a succession of automatically generated generative music mixes for you to enjoy - it really is that easy to get going.

See Koan Music and 'Brian Eno's Generative Music 1 - with SSEYO Koan'.

In 1995 whilst working with SSEYO Koan Pro, Brian Eno coined the term 'Generative Music' to describe any music that is ever-different & changing, created by a system.

SSEYO Koan was developed by us, the Cole Brothers, who now develop Wotja, its evolution.

Before 1995 (and with SSEYO Koan Plus) we had been referring to the output of SSEYO Koan as 'Koan Music', but 'Generative Music' is a more generic term. We were therefore happy about Eno choosing that to be used as a descriptor for "Brian Eno's Generative Music 1 - with SSEYO Koan".

Anyhow, let's take a quick journey, and go back in time. Cast your mind way, way back to 1996. Remember that? Back then we would hear people say "the Internet is only a fad", and "it will never take off". At that time computers mostly had pretty low fidelity sound cards, and generative music was a niche area (as is even the case now). So, you can imagine how honored we felt when an artist of Eno's stature took up the gauntlet and used Koan for the above title.

What he then said about generative music was eloquent and well observed and is still relevant today, so read what he said about it on the back of that release.

See also the Sparks In Electric Jelly review of the Oramics exhibition at the British Science Museum with mentions of Generative Music 1 and SSEYO Koan Pro, and see the UK Science Museum Group copy!

Why Share? (see some examples)

Wotja is a FREE lab for you both to enjoy and create your own generative music. It's just human nature to want to let others experience something you have made that you think is amazing or proud of. And it's fun to share that, too!

To that end, we've made it easy to share your Wotja creations as a Wotja URI (AKA 'WJURI') in a message, social media or forum post or web page. Wotja URIs can be played in the Wotja URI Player. You can also also share links to built-in Schemas and Albums that you love.

To import & play Wotja URIs all you (or your listener) needs is Wotja 24.1+ (it's FREE & all App updates are free!).

Alternatively, share your Wotja creations as an Email Attachment, or as a Web File Download.

Web Link Examples Below

If you are using a suitable browser, then once Wotja is installed tap a ▶ Item link below. The Wotja URI will be imported into the Wotja URI Player and auto-played. Some examples have Save & File (download) links, too.

Fan Sharing

Love some of our built-in Schemas (Flows) and Albums? Share a link to these with a Wotja URI that is so small it is perfect for including in character restricted social media posts (e.g. X or Bluesky).

Creator Sharing

Love something you've made? As below, share it as an Album for 15 mins play in Lite mode! These larger WJURIs can be shared in messages, forum posts, webpages and Pro social media (e.g. X Pro, < ~20 Kb).

Advanced Sharing

You can also share your Schema or Mix outside of an Album, perhaps to let someone in Lite (or Pro) mode use it as a Schema or play/edit it as a Mix. Note that the WJURI for a Mix that is multi-cell or includes an image or audio sample can be too large for social sharing (in an Album or not).

New: If you are an artist that uses Wotja and who would like to be listed or featured then get in touch.

Alphabetical list:

• Aric Attas
• Tim Cole
• Timothy Didymus
• Mark Harrop

See also video recordings in Shared Examples.

Below are recordings of Mix files that were exported from the Flow Player. Some Mix files were first re-mixed.

The Mix files are mostly multi-cell and so evolve over time (hard to convey in a short recording!). No 3rd party plug-ins were used and no post-recording FX applied (except normalisation before converting recordings to .mp3).

Heads Up: The best way to hear the results that Wotja can generate is simply to get Wotja (it's free). Once installed, just one tap on a Schema to Play a 'Flow'.

See Open a Wotja file. See also the Shared Examples and the mix files for the Demo Recordings above.

Descriptors: Reflective, peaceable, beautiful, ambient, generative, live, free-flowing, fluid, chance, calming, relaxing, cleansing, personal, creative, interesting, left-field, shareable. Play a Flow to experience it.

Our use of the term "Reflective Music" relates to music containing melodies derived from text, be that user entered or auto-generated by Wotja software.

These melodies are generated by a stochastic technique referred to as "Text to Music" (AKA "text-to-music" or "TTM").

It is the astract but repeatable link between text and melody gives the music it's special "reflective" property: a user connection, context or relevance.

When Text to Music is combined with Generative Music it becomes Reflectve Music, a music ideal formindfulness, relaxation and meditation.

How the term "reflective" arose

See also: PalmSounds 2016 interview with Tim Cole for further background on how we settled on this term.

Having developed generative music technologies since 1990, we (Tim and Pete) had known for a good long while that generative music played against an image seemed to elicit a deeper reflection on the image, unlocking thoughts and memories. So, way back in 2010 we settled on the term "Reflective Music" as a descriptor for the effect the output of a generative music system can have and then secured the reflectivemusic.com domain.

We were not quite there yet, however; a piece of the puzzle was still missing. For "system generated music" to be truly reflective we needed to find a way it could in some way be directly linked to or derived from something of meaning. That was a conundrum, as "generative music" or "inmo music" has randomness at its core!

What turned the corner for us was when in 2013 we realised we could turn text into melodic seed patterns using a technique we call TTM (Text-to-Music). Words carry meaning, can be included in a piece, and (with some extra developments we needed to do) could be used by our generative music engine as input from which to generate melodic seed patterns. The generated music thus has a link to a meaning that can be reflected upon for truly reflective music!

It turned out the combination of both Text-to-Music and Generative Music techniques worked really well because our generative music engine could weave a live generative background around these patterns, and, if required, even "wash them away" over time.

Wotja

With this final piece of the puzzle in place, in 2013 we set about developing the Wotja Generative Music System which continues to go from strength to strength.

Descriptors: Text-to-Music, TTM, Text-to-Song, Text to Music, Text to Song, Text to Melody or Words to Music. See Quickstart with Text-to-Music (TTM).

Text-to-music is a powerful generator technique used by the Wotja App & Wotja AUv3 / VST3 Plug-in software to quickly originate music, melody or beat ideas.

Wotja has used a stochastic/heuristic 'text-to-music' technique ever since 2014 - it is a pioneer!

How it works

Wotja takes text/characters/words as input and uses a stochastic/heuristic (i.e. not generative AI) text-to-music technique to generate a "melodic seed" which can be used in a song, music or even for beat generation, e.g. for IDM.

Assuming nothing is changed in the underlying mix (e.g. Rules etc.) then, although Wotja's text-to-music technique relies on chance, the melody generated for any particular text input should always be the same.

As it originates from your text or words, the parameter-adjustable melody can therefore be considered to be "imbued with meaning". It is that direct linkage that also makes Wotja Text-to-Music a key aspect of Reflective Music.

Ever since 2014 we have continued Wotja's support for TTM and as well as extending how it uses it. This has meant ever-deeper integration between the music engine (WME), sound engine (WAE) and text engine (WTE) at the core of Wotja.

Descriptors: InMo, 'In the moment', reflective, peaceable, beautiful, ambient, generative, live, calming, relaxing, cleansing, personal, creative, interesting, left-field, shareable. Play a Flow to experience it.

For a long time we knew that it was important for us to think more about the application and effect of our apps, rather than the underpinning technologies. We've reflected a lot, therefore, on the nature of what was created by our generative music apps.

At the core of it all is live music, music that only exists at that one moment in time. Of course everyone has different tastes and different definitions of what constitutes music.

Putting that to one side for a moment, experiencing something that you will never hear again, something purely "In the Moment", can be quite profound and reflective. It can help remind you of, and to embrace and appreciate, the live nature of life.

How the term "Inmo" arose

Names are great as they give an easy label to something, but they can also limit how you think about them.

"Generative" is a rather dry, technical term that can mean many things. It generally refers to a method or a system using chance, not AI, to create something, such as ambient, left-field music.

In 2012 we were deliberating the nature of our apps. As our company is called Intermorphic Ltd. we were playing around with things like "input → music output", "in motion" and a few other things.

We had a facepalm moment as the answer was staring us in the face - "intermorphic" : "in the moment".

We wasted no time and secured the domain inmomusic.com!

Epilogue...

Athough there is great artistry in creating generative music, for a listener there is no "meaning" in what is created.

We found that using "InMo" as a term gave us a new found freedom to think again about "meaning" and how we might be able to somehow link that in to the output. To that end we had started playing around with Text to Music. This is a technique where user input, in the form of text, can be used to generate a deterministic seed for creating melodies that can imbue the InMo Music, for a listener, with some meaning and context.

As it's personal and the words can be used for reflection we decided to refer to this specific kind of InMo Music as - "reflective music".

Descriptors: Mindful, reflective, beautiful, ambient, calming, relaxing, cleansing, personal, creative, interesting, left-field, shareable