DavidCope
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Switched on Bach: David Cope's computer compositions
Professor David Cope speaks in purposeful abstraction, attempting to brace us for what we're about to see. We've been on the road for a while now, I tell him. We've seen a lot of strange and wonderful things -- robots and space shuttles and ghost hunts. "Yes, well," he answers quietly, as we ascend the stairs of his Santa Cruz, Calif., home. "I guarantee you've never seen a laboratory like this." It's hard to say precisely what we've gotten ourselves into. It's a fairly standard suburban house from the outside, a few blocks from the base of the hill that holds the University of Santa Cruz. In amongst a forest of redwoods, it overlooks the pristine wilderness of the central coast that so famously inspired Kerouac, Miller and Steinbeck. Cope, a lifelong music professor, wears a denim jacket, floral button-up, white stubble and a sly smile. If there exists a walking manifestation of Santa Cruz, it might well be him. It's the perfect uniform for an unassuming computer music pioneer. There's nothing of particular note to speak of downstairs in the living room, where Cope gives lessons on a grand piano littered with any number of music books. When we first arrive, Cope's wife answers the door slightly confused and momentarily sure that we're there to sell magazines -- the professor, it seems, has forgotten to inform her that our arrival has been pushed up by an hour. From upstairs, Cope suggests we shoot the art lining the walls above the piano as he readies himself for our conversation. "I made them on a computer!" he excitedly exclaims about the planetary orbs and psychedelic swirls -- mathematical, formulaic interactions imprinted into a bronzed-aluminum backing. They're a small selection of a seemingly infinite and diverse collection of Cope's artistic expressions that decorate the house.
Computer composition pioneer David Cope discusses his iPad app (video)
We probably shouldn't have been surprised when David Cope excitedly asked us if we'd like to see his new iPad app, as we began packing up our shoot for a forthcoming Engadget Show episode. After all, the former UC Santa Cruz music professor's name has, over the past several decades, become closely tied to the world of computer-generated music -- it figures that the journey that began with punch cards would have eventually led to tablets and smartphones. Jambandit hit the App Store a couple of weeks ago. It's the first offering from Recombinant Inc., a small company co-founded by Cope in Santa Cruz a few years back as a "commercial extension of a body of [his] academic work." His time in the field began during one particularly bad bout with writer's block -- tasked with writing an opera, Cope eschewed traditional paths for the earnest development of a new system for creating music, working to create a software program that could generate scores in the styles of different composer -- a move that, unsurprisingly, opened up a slew of questions on the subject of creativity.
