With us, Tim Cole and Pete Cole, at our new company Intermorphic! It's evolved and now lives on in WOTJA, see below.
Back in 1990, way before our new company Intermorphic, we co-founded the company SSEYO. It was at SSEYO that the Koan Music Engine was built by us, Tim Cole & Pete Cole.
We sent out the first betas for SSEYO Koan branded apps in 1992 and initially called the music it made "Koan Music". The genre later became better known as "Generative Music" and 25+ years later SSEYO Koan would go on to become Intermorphic WOTJA. See credits.
In 1994 we published Koan Plus and, at about the time in 1995 as we were readying Koan Pro V1.0 authoring system for release, we were lucky enough to bring it to the attention of Brian Eno. In autumn 1995 Eno started working with Koan Pro (superceded by Noatikl in 2007 then Wotja in 2017) culminating in the 1996 release of Generative Music 1 with SSEYO Koan Software.
Following that SSEYO published the Koan X "Drag 'n' Mix" Generative Music mixer and a couple of Koan content titles, Niskala by Jamuud (composed/recorded in 96) and Float by Timothy Didymus (composed/recorded in 1995/96), and then the cool Koan Essentials Morphing Drum and Bass with SF2 and WAV samples licenced from Zero-G (also now available for free for use in Wotja).
A number of internet and mobile developments ensued for Koan between 1997 and 2002, a crucial one being that we added to the SKME an integral sound engine called the SSEYO Koan Sound Engine (SKSE).
In 2002 SSEYO was then acquired by Tao Group, at which point SSEYO Koan sadly passed away (it's gone, meaning it's not been developed or supported since 2002). As SSEYO Koan's developers, though, we (Intermorphic) got back all the SSEYO IP in 2008 and have now retired it. However...
SSEYO Koan has evolved and now lives on in Wotja, see below...
Generative music apps are all about the music engine and sound engine that underpins them.
The SSEYO Koan Music Engine (SKME) and SSEYO Koan Sound Engine (SKSE) were built by us and have now gone, as are the various SSEYO Koan apps that used them. The good news is that at Intermorphic we develop (and are continuing to develop) engines that are more powerful than the SKME and SKSE.
At Intermorphic, we started with the Noatikl Music Engine (NME) and Partikl Sound Engine (PSE) that were at the heart of Noatikl 3, Mixtikl 7, Wotja 3 and Tiklbox 1. The NME was a clean room build engine that leveraged the 15+ man years of experience we gained from developing the SKME, and the PSE leveraged our experience developing the SKSE and also the mobile audio work we did at Tao. Note that the Noatikl Music Engine was NOT the SSEYO Koan Music Engine, but was very like it and could open Koan files created with any version of Koan Pro (i.e. right back to 1992) or Koan X - which means you haven't lost your old work. See the FAQ below.
For 2017, to simplify things moving forward, we have evolved the NME and PSE into the Intermorphic Music Engine (IME) and Intermorphic Sound Engine (ISE), both of which are at the heart of Wotja and both of which we plan to extend in the coming years.
★ ★ ★ ★ Noatikl review by Music Radar (Computer Music Mag) (+ we have loads of Noatikl user quotes):
Yes you can! Get Wotja V20.2.1+ and you can open them directly.
Note that if you used the SKSE (Koan Synth) for sounds then those settings will not be imported correctly. That is because Wotja uses a different synth engine in the ISE. You may get something imported, but it is highly likely not to sound as you remembered.
Sorry, we do not import .skp files; you'll need to look for your master .skd files instead.
That is not necessary. If you don't have any Koan files of your own, then this whole section is irrelevant to you!
While we can open old skd files (see above) and use most of the parameters as originally intended, we're unable to import old SKSE (Koan Synth network definitions. The reason for this is that the old format is very substantially different to the new format used by Intermorphic Sound Engine (ISE). Wotja includes a large number of Sound and FX Presets which you can use as starting points.
That is relatively easy.
IMPORTANT: The files must have been saved by Koan Pro V1.3 (1996) or later and so be of V1.3 format.