Creating and Exploring Huge Parameter Spaces: Interactive Evolution as a Tool for Sound Generation

In this paper, a program is presented that applies interactive evolution to sound generation, i.e., preferred individuals are repeatedly selected from a population of genetically bred sound objects, created with various synthesis and pattern generation algorithms. This simplifies aural exploration of huge synthesis parameter spaces, and presents a possibility for the sound artist to create new sound engines customized for this kind of creation and exploration – sound engines too complex to control in any other way. Different sound engines are presented, together with a discussion of compositional applications. It is also shown how this technique can be used to simplify sound design in standard hardware synthesizers, a task normally avoided by most musicians, due to the required amount of technical understanding.