Pete Cole of Intermorphic let us know via comments that they have released noatikl, a generative (MIDI) music engine for Windows and Mac OS X.

noatikl creates musical information in the form of MIDI notes, and can also generate and send MIDI controller information to control settings of your favourite synths, FX units and samplers.Intermorphic was founded by Pete and Tim Cole, who previously had developed Koan, a generative music engine favored by Brian Eno.

There are variants available for both Win and Mac OS X, including plugin versions for e.g. Logic (AU), Sonar (VSTi, DXi MIDI Effects), Cubase (VSTi, MIDI Effects) etc. as well as a standalone version, very useful in its own right, for where there is no suitable plugin variant, e.g. Pro Tools.

Here’s a video introduction:

noatikl Uses:

• Generate new musical ideas
• Break composer’s block
• Augment an existing musical work
• Create ambient sound tracks
• Experiment with generative music systems
• Noodle with music sculptures
• Generatively change synth, FX and sampler settings
• Simply have fun creating music.

noatikl’s Background

noatikl is a new generative music system for a world where the Koan Music Engine (created by Tim and Pete Cole in a previous company called SSEYO) is no longer available. With noatikl, we’ve started again from a completely clean slate, focused on creating a range of noatikl variants in plug-in form that can be used the desktop tool sequencers that everybody in music uses these days. We’ve also created a standalone version of noatikl that can sync where required with your favourite sequencer. Generative music is here to stay!

Our original inspiration for our approach to music engines, came from the classic Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. In this series, Asimov introduced an imaginary device called a Visi-Sonor, which could be manipulated by a skilled operator to create amazing multimedia entertainments combining music and visuals. You can think of this device as a kind of hyper-instrument. Tim was really excited about this idea, and it kept coming back to him, until eventually we started to create software that went some way to fulfilling Asimov’s wonderful vision.

The imagery for noatikl is meant to symbolise empty note placeholders on a surfboard, that can be filled by an engine. With noatikl, you can surf the wave of sound and enjoy the fluidity of its music. Also, noatikl is primarily a MIDI note generator, so we thought “note tikl” was appropriate. This concept moved along similar lines to those for liptikl, in that the product would be tickling notes into existence, and hopefully resulting in cool new ideas.