ABSTRACT
What are the synergies between human-controlled music and computer-generated music? Prominent jazz musician and educator Yusuf Lateef believes that “External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument”. In this chapter we ask what happens when you allow a machine to play a part in the process of generating music, rather than only in the process of recording it? Or, what happens when a machine decides not to play when prompted or decides to play something different to what it was programmed to play? Through interviews during and after an improvised recording/performance, we ask humans what happened in the interaction with machines. We come to conclusions that in improvised music the development of innovative self-referential and decision-making programs have and will continue to have their greatest impact in sound creation, environment manipulation and the distortion of time, all which are rich with possibility in terms of free jazz as much as any other area of music. We acknowledge at the same time there are concerns about increased agency handed to machines, and the possible creation of sonic environments where machines create, produce and respond in exponentially more complex patterns and anti-patterns.
