xen.assist: Assisted Xentonal Algorithmic Composition with R
Regular talk, 9:40 - 10:40 AM
Inspired by the works of Erv Wilson (Narushima 2019) and William Sethares (Sethares 2013), xen.assist is an R package for composers of xentonal electronic music - music in scales other than the traditional 12-tone equal divisions of the octave. Based on previous packages eikosany (Borasky 2026b) and consonaR (Borasky 2026a), xen.assist features:
- Scale generation and keyboard mapping (Wilson),
- Scale, timbre and consonance analysis (Sethares), and
- Agentic AI assistance for the composition process.
The talk will focus on the latter - the use of agentic AI, enabled by R packages that interact with large language models. And there will be musical samples!
References:
- Borasky, M. Edward (Ed). 2026a. consonaR: Consonance-Based Algorithmic Composition. https://algocompsynth.github.io/consonaR/.
- Borasky, M. Edward (Ed). 2026b. Eikosany: Algorithmic Composition with Erv Wilson’s Combination Product Sets. https://algocompsynth.github.io/eikosany/.
- Narushima, T. 2019. Microtonality and the Tuning Systems of Erv Wilson. Routledge Studies in Music Theory. Taylor & Francis Limited.
- Sethares, W. A. 2013. Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale, Second Edition. Springer London.
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