Thoughts on creative evolution: A meta-generative approach to composition

Numerous composers have used evolutionary algorithms to create music and sound. Such techniques can navigate vast spaces of possible results in a directed search, and they can be applied to supervise virtually any generative process, and hence operate on a meta-generative level. Based on nine years of work in the field, as composer, musician, researcher and developer, the author gives his view on how evolutionary algorithms can be used as creative tools in the compositional process, and shares his experiences of how these systems can be designed to work well, from a composer's viewpoint. Their limitations, aesthetic implications and idiomatics are also discussed.