Scott at Bitnotic sent us some info on their new generative ambient music application, chill. chill 1.0b1 is a generative ambient music program for Apple Macintosh computers that creates infinitely varying songs in a ambient/chill out style. Songs played by chill can be saved in AIFF, Wave, and MIDI formats. Songs are royalty-free and can be used in podcasts, video productions, and record albums without further licensing. You can also use chill MIDI files as the basis for compositions in digital audio workstations such as Apple’s Logic. While each song is unique and random, you have several options for shaping the results. The “Mood” controls include Mellow and Swell. You also control the mix of the instrument parts and effects. Other cool features include chill radio, where a new generative song starts after a specified amount of time (5, 10, 20, or 30 minutes), so that users can listen to continuously generated chill music. I gave chill a workout and found it to be interesting, but not deep enough to hold my interest very long. I love the idea of generative music software - but it needs to have enough options to let you create deep layers of constantly shifting sound. The software will probably appeal most to users looking for a simple interface that lets you jump into generative ambient music and people looking for royalty-free background music for videos and other projects. Bitnotic is actively seeking feedback on the public beta. The company is holding a contest where the three best comments/suggestions/bug reports will win free licenses to the final product. Details are available on the Bitnotic web site. Preview an example of chill’s output below. Then download it and give it a try.

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