Ed Borasky

Eikosany: Microtonal Algorithmic Composition with R

Eikosany is an R package for composing microtonal electronic music based on the theories of Erv Wilson. It gives a composer the ability to

  • create compositions using a wide variety of microtonal scales,
  • manipulate the scores as R data.table objects,
  • synthesize the compositions as audio files, and
  • export the compositions as MIDI files to digital audio workstations.

In this talk I’ll briefly describe the music theory behind Eikosany and walk through a typical composition scenario. At the end, I’ll play the resulting composition.



Ed Borasky headshot
Pronouns: he/him
Beaverton, OR, USA
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky is a retired scientific applications and operating systems programmer who has been using R since version 0.90.1 on Red Hat Linux 6.2.* Before R there was Fortran and assembler - lots of different assemblers. (Floating Point Systems AP-120B microcode, even.)

Besides his main professional use for R, Linux performance analysis and capacity planning, Ed has used R for computational finance, fantasy basketball analytics, and now, algorithmic composition. His music is best defined as experimental, combining algorithmic composition, microtonal scales, and spectral sound design.