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Comment by whiddershins | Hacker News Reader

I have, in the entire time (20+ years) I’ve produced music, been against randomness.

I could write an article or maybe a short book on the topic, but basically I think it is super lame.

I am much more fascinated by complexity than randomness. Concepts like least common multiple for example, can lead to wide variation without resorting to randomness.

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I am a musician myself (both modular synthesis and stringed instruments in improvisational contexts) and while I agree with your idea (complexity being more interesting than randomness) isn't the issue here also that randomness in the musical concept is a lot about perceived randomness?

True randomness is not too exiting most of the time (except maybe in works simlar to those John Cage made, where the concept itself is part of the work). However a "random" change can be exciting, it can be exciting when you tell humans to act random, or when you bring chance into complex systems.

E.g. least common multiple between two numbers but one is a choice between a set of three.

But you can generate complexity out of randomness. Things like L-systems can generate self-similarity and other kinds of complexity out of a random seed.

In that case I'd say that although the seed is random, the system is anything but random. This also goes for various forms of "chaos games". You make random choices on each turn, but those choices are within a framework of possible choices that winds up producing surprising order.

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