Bridges 2012 Short Paper

Music composition from nonlinear dynamics has been a subject of thorough research, producing interesting music tracks. Simple chaotic maps or even more complex iterative schemes have been proposed, taking advantage of the "structured spontaneity" of nonlinear dynamics by directly transforming the mathematical objects to musical entities. In this work we examine the music compositions produced by two nonlinear systems in terms of complexity, expressed through the Shannon Information Entropy of their Pitch Class Profiles. We present a methodology to interpret the information obtained by the iterative equations to several tonal and rhythmic attributes. This methodology is implemented in real-time software. A Graphical User Interface is provided that allows the user to adjust several variables while listening to and observing the derived results.