Composition 1

Chance - Low

Indeterminacy - High

Entropy - High

For our first composition, we decided to experiment with indeterminacy. We let each group member choose any piece of music to use. Then, following the pseudocode on the handout, we each used a random number generator to generate an interval (between 3 seconds and 20 seconds). Then, at each interval, each group member would use the random number generator again to generate either a 0 or a 1, which signifies stopping or starting a piece of music. This process had high indeterminacy because none of the members knew how the pieces would sound together. In addition, we all picked random intervals and started/stopped our pieces at random points, so again there was no telling how the composition would sound. This resulted in high entropy for this composition, since we could not predict the outcome of the composition. However, this piece had very low chance for both the listeners and the composers because we each had complete control over what piece we wanted to choose. Therefore, if the listeners knew what kinds of songs the composers preferred, it would not be difficult to predict what kinds of songs would be in the composition.