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 NATURAL SELECTION (NatSel) is a real-time performance environment for computer and midi-equipped acoustic piano.Commissioned by IRCAM in 1996, NatSel was accomplished with the generous support of Tom Mays and Richard Dudas, and was premiered in the Espace Projection at IRCAM in a concert shared with Michel Waisvisz. The musical syntax for NatSel was built in MAX, long before there was MSP or Jitter or Gen~, and consists of midi analysis and generation tools that can be configured to match changing performance situations. While all performances of Natural Selection exist within the same landscape of possibilities, each performance is unique and original.

NatSel exemplifies the ideal of "composing the instrument". It was singularly responsible for my eventual hire at UC Berkeley. David Wessel, then Director at CNMAT, attended the 1996 premiere where I shared with him my ideas concerning composable instruments, something that resonated very stongly with him and with that entire generation.  

At the time I received the NatSel commission, I was not satisifed with the model that IRCAM employed where a musical assistant (called a REAM today) supported the production effort of the composer. In that situation the technician (most often a composer) would assist a composer who most often had little or no technical experience. I had just finished the one-year IRCAM cursus with Jean-Baptiste Barriere and Xavier Chabot, and Mikail Malt, but I had only scratched the technical surface of things. I felt that having someone else doing my programming created a schism that impepeded the innovative goal at hand.  

When I accepted the commission, I proposed a different model of interaction and it turned the project into a year-long effort.  I asked that the musical assistant Tom Mays support my learning of Max, that we solve the challenges together, that he teach me along the way, and that I do the actual research/programming for the piece.  The idea was that at the end of the research period whatever existed would become the first performance of an on-going NatSel project.

NatSel has stayed alive in many guises through the years, but the core concepts remain and the basic idea stands. It begins with the notion that serial compositional technique can be used as a decipherable code for the computer to follow a performer. The computer can locate the composer inside a combinatorial matrix and create accompanying responses that are smarter than direct triggering of events.  

The original work was thought of as an "open" composition with composer performing from the piano wired with midi. The patch was designed to follow the real-time composer/performer through a pre-defined, yet non-linear landscape. The original version included a second keyboard controller as well as a Yamaha Disklavier. The second keyboard controller allowed the performer to leave the piano and take full control of every parameter of the patch, thus turning NatSel into an independent music generator. The first performance of Natural Selection was given in Paris on June 25, 1996 in the Espace Projection at IRCAM. 

The original software was developed by Tom Mays with support from Richard Dudas. Later Edmund Campion became the primary developor with help from several graduate students including Jeremy Hunt.

In Natural Selection, the musical syntax was conceived in parallel with the development of an 'instrument' comprised of a piano interfaced with a large interactive computer program running on a Macintosh computer with the Max programming environment. The software for the piece consists of a set of tools that can be configured to match changing performance situations. While all performances of Natural Selection exist within the same landscape of possibilities, each performance is unique and original. Natural is an "interactive" composition.

In Natural Selection , every detail of the electro-acoustic surface is initiated from some action on the part of the pianist. The computer compares incoming note streams and chords to a pitch matrix which upon positive identification outputs an influence variable. The influence variable may or may not be used by the patch to generate a response. There is no linear or prepared score for Natural Selection . The computer and the composer follow one another in accordance with a fixed set of constraints that bind the actions of the two. In addition to pitch information, the computer also analyzes and is influenced by velocities, delta-times, key-splits, etc....

In performance, the pianist/composer is able to control all aspects of the patch by the use of harmonic 'types' or sets. Certain sets of pitches will enable and/or cancel certain effects. In this way, the hands of the composer/pianist never leave the performance instrument to initiate or trigger some response from the computer. In Natural Selection , the composer is free from the mediating responsibilities of coordinating with an ensemble, tape, or computer. Most importantly, he is liberated to interact with the computer's response in an instantaneous fashion. This immediate feedback is highly generative and is a major source of inspiration for the entire work.

Natural Selection was commissioned by IRCAM in 1996.