Experiments In Musical Intelligence

When you think of "computer music", you don't usually think of Scott Joplin or Bach, but the world is a crazy place.

David Cope is a professor at University of California in Santa Cruz, where he teaches music theory and composition. He also happens to be Honorary Professor of Computer Science at Xiamen University in China. Also, a spectacular classical composer. Somewhere on the Venn diagram of this man's career, you would find the reason that he is so popular, and the reason I found him in the first place. He designed and wrote a program to analyze the patterns in the oeuvre of dozens of musical artists. From this, you will find music that was written entirely by a computer, designed to emulate the sound of a particular musician. He also has the distinction of being one of the only artists I've ever seen whose homepage is also his professional ".edu" domain. The album you'll probably want to grab is his "Experiments in Musical Intelligence", available in its entirety on his site. On that note, he's also probably the only artist I've seen who offers the actual programs he uses on his page for free. I haven't used them, so if you decide to pursue this, tell me in the comments. I think he also sells his scores on the page, if you ever want to play something it sound like Joplin would have composed had he not died.