Algorithmic music composition has always had a place in computing. One of the first applications Ada Lovelace proposed for the Analytic Engine almost 200 years ago was the generation of music compositions. 200 years has seen a lot of progress in this area but has also reiterated something musicians have always known… writing music is hard.While there has been a lot written about the challenges of emulating or producing creativity with machines, the focus of this post is on a more specific issue: music as data.

Algorithmic music composition has always had a place in computing. One of the first applications Ada Lovelace proposed for the Analytic Engine almost 200 years ago was the generation of music compositions. 200 years has seen a lot of progress in this area but has also reiterated something musicians have always known… writing music is hard.While there has been a lot written about the challenges of emulating or producing creativity with machines, the focus of this post is on a more specific issue: music as data.