Composing with Algorithms: An Interview with David Cope

Abstract

10 Computer Music Journal David Cope (see Figure 1) is a well-known composer, programmer, author and, since 1977, Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His five books (Cope 1991, 1996, 2000, 2001, and 2005), four recordings (Cope 1994, 1997, 1999, 2003), and many published articles on his program Experiments in Musical Intelligence, affectionately known as “Emmy,” describe 25 years of research into musical style simulation and related topics including musical recombinance, pattern matching, allusions, structure, and form detection. Table 1 presents a listing of Mr. Cope’s compositions (spanning fifty years as of 2006) and a general description of Emmy’s prodigious output. As a writer and colleague of Mr. Cope at UCSC, I have been tracking the evolution of Emmy since its inception in the mid 1980s. This interview, concentrating on Mr. Cope’s views on algorithms and music, is a distillation of approximately six hours of recorded conversation as well as occasional notes and correspondence.