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Automatous Monk was a composer and pianist. He was born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1912 and died in 1964 in Minneapolis. He made his living as a jazz pianist in bars and clubs mostly in the Twin Cities area. Legend has it that he met the mathematician Alan Turing while visiting a niece in Princeton, New Jersey. (Turing was studying at Princeton University at the time.)
Monk and Turing met by chance in a coffee shop in Princeton. Turing explained to Monk the concept of Turing machines, which are basically the equivalent of computer programs. Monk, who had a mathematical bent, despite a lack of much formal training, picked up on Turing's ideas quickly and wondered whether they could be applied to music composition.
Working in a spare bedroom in his house in Duluth, Monk painstakingly wrote simple Turing machine and cellular automata programs that generate musical melodies even though he had no computer to run these programs. These programs (written in Big Chief tablets) were later found in his attic by his great-nephew, Paul Reiners, a programmer, and translated into Java.
Turn off that smooth 'jazz' FM nonsense and listen to some AM Radio for a change, Automatous Monk Radio, that is. More...
Properly mixed versions of Monk tunes. More...
Listen to some of Monk's oldies but goldies. More...
Monk has just finished composing his first punk rock/hard bop work, The Well-Tempered Cellular Automaton, consisting of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys. More...
Leipzig is a Just Intonation library written in Java. More...
Be sure to check out the Monk's box set, containing his renditions of all 256 elementary rules.
The following applications can be installed and run as Java webstart applications:
After you have run a Java Web Start application once or more from the webpage, you will be able to run it without the webpage by running the Java Web Start Application manager. If you are running on a Windows platform, you can use the Java Web Start Application manager to make a short cut on your desktop.
Don't have JWS? Download it on java.sun.com
The User's Manual is available online.
Automatous Monk is an open source project, protected under the GNU Public License and written in Java. Those interested in the source code should check out the Automatous Monk SourceForge.net project site. Automatous Monk was written with the assistance of the jMusic framework. All audio files on this website are protected under the the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.
Some related (and possibly some unrelated), interesting links.
Automatous Monk was programmed by Paul Reiners.
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Commons License.
Mail reiners@automatous-monk.com
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