Bloom vs Progressions

Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers are pleased to announce Bloom: 10 Worlds – a developed, augmented and expanded new edition of 2008’s game-changing original Bloom app, which explored uncharted territory in the realm of applications and was dubbed “The First Great iPhone App” by Gizmodo. Requiring no musical or technical ability, the egalitarian and user-friendly Bloom app enabled anyone of any age to create music, simply by touching the screen. Part instrument, part composition and part artwork, Bloom’s innovative controls allowed users to create elaborate patterns and unique melodies by simply tapping the screen. A generative music player took over when Bloom was left idle, creating an infinite selection of compositions and their accompanying visualisations. Bloom: 10 Worlds is a reimagining of the original – not simply a remaster. If the original Bloom was a single, then this would be an album. The widely broadened palette of sounds and images can be experienced via 10 new ‘worlds’, each exploring a new direction for Bloom. The first world the user encounters is an echo of the original app, with circles appearing where the user taps. Each subsequent world unlocks automatically, introducing new combinations of sounds, shapes, colours and rules of behaviour. Praise for the original Bloom “The very first iPhone apps were universally dull. And then Bloom came out. It was immediately obvious that something special was happening. The app was interesting on an artistic level – one that made you reconsider the relationship between technology and music. It raised the bar for musical iPhone apps.” Gizmodo “Hypnotic and ludicrously addictive.” The Guardian “A relaxing alternative to just about anything else you can do with an iPhone.” Wired Eno began collaborating with musician / software designer Peter Chilvers on Will Wright’s computer game Spore. Their shared interest in generative music rapidly lead to the development of a prototype for Bloom in 2008. In the intervening decade, they experimented further with the field, expanding their catalogue of apps with Trope, Scape and Reflection. In that time Chilvers has also acted as an engineer and technical advisor to Eno on a number of other projects. A series of multi-speaker installations around the world laid the groundwork for 2016’s The Ship, and they premiered Bloom: Open Space, a mixed reality installation in Amsterdam in 2018. In addition to his work with Eno, Chilvers co-founded the Burning Shed label and online store, toured with Underworld’s Karl Hyde as keyboardist and musical director, and has recorded instrumental albums and collaborations with vocalist Tim Bowness.

Progressions is an AUv3 MIDI plugin for your favourite DAW. It can be used to generate a unique set of chords that are unrelated to traditional scales, which become predictable and repetative over time. Instead, Progressions uses a unique way of mathermaically generating a series of related chords using only a root note and mode (major or minor). Chord sequences are limited by the selected complexity and freedom levels, which mimic the way traditional composers of old would wander away from tonality and back again. The complexity level start off at Basic, which uses only the most common chords (I, IV, V and relative minor ii, iii, and vi triads). As you progress through the levels, you can add parallel majors and minors, sus and dom chords etc. At level 3 we start to introduce 6th and 7th chords, and then 9ths chords, all the way to 11ths, 13ths, Quartals and all their variations. The freedom level allows us to specify how far to drift away from tonality (the root), even allowing you to create never ending randomized soundscapes. Progressions allows you to quickly randomize a toolbox of chords, that can be played in a variety of modes (block chords, arpeggiated, or strummed). These can be synced to a host application, triggered remotely or pieced together into a song. Song mode allow you to change play modes on the fly as well as being able to control many features of the app in real time. Progressions supports open and closed chords with selectable voicings. It has an intelligent algorithm that attempts to align top notes of chords, add additional bass, and open chord padding to give equal weight to chords with only 3 notes. You can even play with rootless voicings. The Humanize section allows you to control chord and note timings, as well as set velocity variations to ensure things don't get too robitic. Progressions also features an integrated arpeggiator and strummming pattern editor. You can load up to 6 arp and 6 strum patterns at the same time and seemlessly switch between them manually, remotely, or using song mode. If you run multiple instances, Progressions allows you to sync your chord pads, song chain, arpeggiator / strum patterns between instances. Progressions can be loaded as a MIDI plugin or as an Instrument for those programs that don't support MIDI plugins (such as GB). Additionally when loaded as an instrument, you can use either internal sounds (soundfonts) or send MIDI directly to other MIDI instruments. Features • Block Chord, Arpeggiator and Strummer modes. • Supports open and closed Chords. • Varying complexity levels of chords. • Freedom levels control how far from the root key you can go. • Rootless voicing mode. • Open chord padding support. • Additional bass note mode. • Supports all common chord types. • Edit the preferred chord list to exclude certain chord types. • Input MIDI control for chords and play modes. • Automatic top note alignment of chords. • Hold Pedal support. • Built in ARP and STRUM editor. • Humanize options for chord and note velocity and timings. • Comprehensive Song Mode with 256 steps and looping. • Randomize chord progressions, arps and strumming patterns. • Route Chord/Arp/Strum modes & MIDI thru to any of 4 output ports. • Supports soundfonts when loaded as an Instrument plugin. • Sync multiple instances of Progressions. • AUv3 compatible MIDI plugin supporting Sync to Host.