Encoding structure as an algorithm lets a whole arrangement be produced and restructured in one move

In the RA documentary a former drum-and-bass producer contrasts DAW production - placing one snare sample on the timeline, then another, copying and nudging each by hand, a tedious process that could take a week or months to finish a track - with live algorithmic composition, where ‘the right algorithms’ let a full track be produced directly in code during performance. The key insight is that an algorithm encodes structure, not individual events, so a single change can rearrange or transform the whole arrangement at once. That is the productive power the producer says he lacked when moving samples around by hand.

Examples

DAW: place 64 snare hits manually on a timeline. TidalCycles: d1 $ s "sn*16" # n "[0 2 4 7]" generates and plays the equivalent live, and one edit restructures all of it.

Assessment

Describe two ways encoding structure as an algorithm changes a musician’s relationship to a piece’s structure, compared with event-by-event DAW editing.