The world and its excitedly-on-trend-again uncle may be having a big 1990s moment right now, but this week a popular music-making tool from the 1980s is also making a comeback.

Music Mouse was a pioneering piece of software released by composer and developer Laurie Spiegel in 1986 for the original Apple Macintosh and other computers of the time.

Its use of algorithmic composition techniques was a precursor – 40 years ago – to the current boom in GenAI music models. A good time, then, for Music Mouse to be updated for modern devices.

Audio technology firm Eventide is the company responsible, revamping the ‘intelligent instrument’ for modern Macs and PCs.

Like the original version, it’s controlled by the mouse, but can be used with a range of digital audio workstations (DAWs) and notation software. Eventide’s Tony Agnello describes it as an homage to the work of Spiegel.

“She imagined using the computer as an intelligent musical tool that could be ‘trained’ to accompany and enrich a musician’s performance. She was light years ahead of her time,” he said.

Spiegel has been talking to The Verge this week about the project, and her thoughts on modern AI music.

“Algorithms can be used to generate music. I have written and used some. Music Mouse is not generative, though. It does nothing on its own. It’s a musical instrument played by a person,” she said. Spiegel also addressed the importance of human experience to music-making.

“We humans have imaginations and emotions. There are internal experiences going on inside of us that we feel driven to express, to communicate, to share,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter what machines can generate on their own. We will always have those internal subjective experiences, emotion, and imagination, and people will experience them intensely enough to feel driven to create them external to their own selves in order to communicate and share them.”

“You can’t replace human self-expression or the need for it by simulating their results,” she added.

For more on the original Music Mouse, watch this 1987 interview with Spiegel talking about the project: