Al Biles, Jazz Trumpeter
Creator of GenJam, the Genetic Jammer
Welcome to the online home of Al Biles. I initially built this site as a replacement for my venerable (and profoundly retro) website at RIT, which dated back to the very early days of the Internet. This replacement was required because 1) the RIT site went away when I retired in June, 2019, and 2) it desperately needed to make its way into the current millennium.
These days I am playing a lot of straight-up jazz with the Mid-Century Modern Jazz Quartet and less frequently as Al Biles & GenJam, which was the focus of my research at RIT into computer jazz improvisation and the reason this site is genjam.org. Check both groups out:
Al’s Lectures – I also give lectures and teach fun courses for various organizations, including Penfield Rec’s DEAR program (Daytime Education At Recreation). Click here to find resources I used and other stuff relating to each course.
p5 Code – I should call this COVID Code, since I started playing with it during the lockdown. p5 is the Web-friendly version of Processing, built on top of Javascript. It was designed for artists and basically gives you graphics and animation for free. I’ve been playing with the Audio capabilities and have come up with a granular synthesis paint program, several sonifications of chaotic systems, and some synthesis demos. I’ve posted a selection of “greatest hits.”
Academic Stuff – Legacy content from my former website, when I was a Professor in the School of Interactive Games and Media (IGM) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). Since I’m now Professor Emeritus (retired in June 2019), I no longer need to maintain the illusion that I’m an academic first and a jazz musician second, but some of the academic stuff is still useful to academics, hence this academic space. Probably all just academic at this point…
Al’s Blog – For what it’s worth
Contact – Get a hold of Al Biles
Al Biles 