Musical Machines: History, Theory, and Techniques for Makers and Musicians (Creating Technology for Music)

Musical instruments that "play themselves" have a long and storied history that reaches back thousands of years.While the twentieth century saw the phonograph and its descendants relegate these creations of the mechanical golden age to a veritable basement, the twenty-first century has seen them revitalized.A new breed of musical machines has emerged that synthesizes physical and computational worlds.These artificial agents may seem cold and alien, but they can also be understood as expressions of fundamental human values and goals.Their abilities and characteristics are unique from those possessed by humans and offer novel creative possibilities to artists and musicians who use them. The purpose of Musical Machines: History, Theory, and Techniques for Makers and Musicians is to inspire the creativity of musicians, engineers, and makers by helping them imagine, design, build, and play with such machines.This requires exploring our complex relationship with artificial agents and confron