I'm Bob Boylan from All Songs Considered. The following is the audio from our latest Tiny Desk concert.

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Or go to NPR.org slash Tiny Desk concerts. the the the the the the the The the I'm going to be.

And I'm not. And I'll... Oh, the Right. the The the The the The the Thank you so much and Thank you so much and uh...

thank you so much and uh... thanks so much for having me here. This is this is really an honor and a great joy for me to be here at Tiny Desk. So I'm a big fan.

So I'm playing big fan. So I'm playing this project that I call natural machines and it's called

natural machines because I really like to think of music as living at the intersection of the algorithmic and the spiritual.

I mean a lot of the art I love is kind of a combination of on the one hand emotions and

intuition and on the other hand maybe in equal part rules and constraints.

I mean people have been making art at the intersection of those two things for

those two forces you know for thousands of years and and my idea

with natural machines was to separate these things out so I'm doing free

improvisation here I'm everything I'm playing I'm doing doing free improvisation here. I'm, everything I'm playing, I'm just trying to make up in the moment

and just be present in the music.

But the way the computer is reacting is governed by rules.

And these are programs that I've written

that take what I've played, and in real time,

they come up with an answer. And it's just like really simple rules I've written.

For instance in that last one there's an axis of symmetry in the middle of the piano and everything I play on one side is reflected on the other side.

Super simple but it leads to musical problems that then lead to new music.

And that's what gets me really excited about it.

That's the power of constraints.

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