The author discusses the conceptual basis of an ecological approach to music composition, considering the epistemological and compositional concepts involved. The author's text-and-tape piece, touch'n'go/toco y me voy, is presented as an example of an ecologically based musical work, in which the sound event functions as the basic unit of multilevel musical structures. Digital resynthesis techniques are integrated in the compositional process by means of environmental sound models. Ecological models establish formal relationships without obscuring the recognizability of everyday sounds. Materials, techniques, perceptual constraints and references to social issues are integrated in a consistent compositional method.

Cyclic arrays, such as clock faces, have advantages over linear arrays for conceptualizing repetitive rhythmic structures. The author maps rhythms from African and Indonesian musics into cyclic arrays and analyzes them using concepts from Gestalt psychology, mathematical group theory and psycho-acoustics. The perceptual structures thus revealed exist between the different musical parts played on various instruments and contradict the usual processes of auditory segregation according to the physical locations of instrumentation. This prompts a proposal for a theory of musical despatialization to explain the psychological efficacy of these rhythms.

The author discusses his computer music composition, Voyager, which employs a computer-driven, interactive & “virtual improvising orchestra” that analyzes an improvisor's performance in real time, generating both complex responses to the musician's playing and independent behavior arising from the program's own internal processes. The author contends that notions about the nature and function of music are embedded in the structure of software-based music systems and that interactions with these systems tend to reveal characteristics of the community of thought and culture that produced them. Thus, Voyager is considered as a kind of computer music-making embodying African-American aesthetics and musical practices.

While recent techniques of digital sound synthesis have put numerous new sounds on the musician's desktop, several artificial-intelligence (AI) techniques have also been applied to algorithmic composition. This article introduces Vox Populi, a system based on evolutionary computation techniques for composing music in real time. In Vox Populi, a population of chords codified according to MIDI protocol evolves through the application of genetic algorithms to maximize a fitness criterion based on physical factors relevant to music. Graphical controls allow the user to manipulate fitness and sound attributes.

In 1994, together with several West African traditional musicians and German electronics expert Kurt Dahlke, the author founded the music ensemble Beta Foly, based in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. The group explores creative musical possibilities generated through the bringing together of different cultures and traditions, placing a strong emphasis on the use of both ancient African instruments and the most recent music technology. The members of Beta Foly compose and improvise eclectic, polymetric music, trying to combine styles in innovative ways in order to find new avenues for composition, ensemble interplay and cross-cultural understanding.