I went to some free form jazz last night. Everybody seemed to be playing by themselves all at the same time and in a very random fashion. The pianist was just mashing the keyboard. I'm sure a computer could create sounds like that easily.
maybe the players were some kind of robots...
It's very possible, likely even, that the band you saw just isn't very good at performing a free jazz set that is musical. It is extremely difficult to do this, but when it is done right it can be absolutely mesmerizing.
between a laptop and a sound generator, the composer soaks up the different tones, processes them, and sends them back in ever-changing variations.
So you feed sounds into the program and it processes them in a cool and somewhat random way and spits it back out. It's a glorified guitar pedal.
The cool thing about this is the element of unpredictability to it. In the right hands this could be used to make some really awesome music.
Personally I liked the example clips a lot (for what it's worth, I am a jazz saxophonist). I know a lot of people that would love to get their hands on this and experiment with it, myself included.
When I left you, I was but the pupil. Now, I am the master. - Darth Vader
