# Generative Composition

**Track:** Audio-Visual & Generative Music — Advanced Creative Coding — proposed (50)
**Framework / surface:** Tone.js
**Level:** Hard
**Prerequisites:** Sequencing with Transport, Markov Text Systems

**In one line:** Probabilistic/Markov note selection; self-evolving ambient.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

Generative composition cedes moment-to-moment choices to a system the composer tunes rather than dictates. Probabilistic note selection — often a Markov chain whose transition weights bias which pitch follows which — produces music that is coherent yet never quite repeats. Brian Eno named and championed this approach, from "Discreet Music" to "Music for Airports," seeking pieces that unfold differently at every listening; Steve Reich's phasing works, where identical patterns drift slowly out of sync, are a kindred mechanism for wringing emergent complexity from simple rules. The aesthetic favors slow evolution and ambient drift — overlapping cycles of differing length recombining into ever-shifting, self-renewing texture.