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Ok, I am surprised with the response I must admit. Both in quantity and quality. As you probably have noticed I'm fairly new to the forum. So far I only posted to revisions topics and that was somehow different. It made me use language I thought will be more appropriate and easier to understand with 'melodies', 'themes' and 'perfect'. So please let me change it now and go into more details. I said 'perfect' melody. So the question arises if evolution ever produces anything perfect. Obviously not. In Genetic Programming you stochastically transform populations of programs into new and (only) hopefully better or fitter programs, where fitness is a measured value reflecting how close / far the algorithm's output is from the desired one. As SSC has noticed there is no functional method of comparing fitness of two melodies. But you don't need to have mathematical concepts involved to tell what you like more. An individual growing the music could be presented with three or four sample melodies and asked to select the best or the worst of the set (positive or negative selection). I can even imagine having an interactive installation evolving music where the fitness is measured by visitors movement and opinions. Siwi, it all has been done before. Or not? It depends how you understand IT. You are right that the whole western music is somehow based on evolving small fragments into larger and larger bits all the way to 19th century and it Motivisch-thematische Arbeit. Then we had mathematically structure works and on counterweight aleatory music. And still with the majority of music history being around sipping small bits around you won't say, there isn't a big difference in the end results. And there is huge difference between consciously evolving theme and stochastically changing structures. Gardener, I think, got what I was thinking about. And I fully agree that the most important question is to determine what _exactly_ it means. That is why I started the thread, this discussion in hope that together we could find the answer. And also I hope to find more possible uses for such technique. For now I have to stop writing and do some other things but in next post I will try to describe explain in more details how I see it. What should mutate, how, and what are possible applications.

That is true, John Cage has studied with Sch

I wouldn't say there is a music gene but it has been already proven by some psychologists that genes have some say in regards to our personality. And personality, I think, has a lot to do when it comes to music and composing. To me composers need: suitable personality - part of which you are born with, part of which you develop through life you experience some education - you cannot compose not knowing anything but on the other end you cannot live without learning about things you are interested in. If the education is formal, academic, is secondary matter. but if the music is to tell about something you need to have this thing to tell. Even prodigies are nothing but curiosity until mid twenties as they simply lack the life's experience, stories to tell and very often technique. You asked about famous composers who did not study music. First to came to my mind was John Cage. I remember him saying in one of his late reviews something like 'I composed because I curious how it will sound'. So his composition wasn't a spark of genius coming through his mind onto a electronic device with the speed making the device to crash. Actually his first composition was purely mathematical as far as I remember. Another example could be Modest Mussorgsky whose music was for long time known only in version ironed out by more classically trained composers from 'the Five' group. If you look carefully you probably will find few more.

I had this thought on my mind for a while now. How about evolving melodies, harmony or even the whole piece genetically? Melodies would have to mate to create offspring melodies with some mutations and then through a process of selection the 'perfect' melody could arise. It could be used either to develop main themes or something else ;) I was thinking about it for a while and I think I'm just about to start coding. Would anyone of you be interested in such a project? To be honest I'm looking to hear back especially from older part of the forum, people with a lot of experience in music and composing, people who actually know how the music is structured but younger and eager composers are welcome as well. Just tell me what you think.

Hi Vicent, Music is interesting but I don't feel it always go well with the text. Binding music with text is very hard to do well as the text gives real meaning to an abstract matter. Somewhere else Dev said 'ANYTHING is allowed' and that's true, nowadays there are no limits to what's allowed as all old rules and bonds have long been broken. The question is what goes well for the purpose and if you can justify it's use. I don't like the parts where you use 3/8 or similar time signature. This are very short moments usually so I imagine you use it to expose part of the text, but if you read into the text it just doesn't make sense to me to draw attention to this particular word, or few words. You are not bound to any formal structure so in my opinion it would be wise to use the thoroughly understood text as a backbone of your composition. Have a look at to baroque most popular Stabat Mater compositions: Pergolesi and Vivaldi They both use 3/8 but they change it along with the way the text is structured. And to some extent they had to. In baroque era there were very rigid rules of composing. Before Palestrina did it like .Later composer approached the text differently. I would recommend the following: - Early XX c. - Late XX c.And here goes the most important think to remember: don't you ever let my comments discourage your writing. These are my opinion and you may or may not agree with them. I could just focus on what I like in your piece I suppose, but then it wouldn't help much.

I am not aware of any free and worth trying ones, but here is the list List of MIDI editors and sequencers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The best I ever worked with is Vienna Suite with it's Vienna Symphonic Library. Have a look at VIENNA SYMPHONIC LIBRARY especially demo zone is worth checking out

Ok, so still I'm waiting for some reviews for the first carol but here is another one. This time less hymnic, homophonic so I had to do a working translation for you to understand it better. (If anyone feels like doing proper poetic translation or writing english words that will feet the music, please be my guest). The piece starts with whispers, gossip-like. then the story is told with quick moving notest with chorus in 3/4 - dancing merrily. Starting with bar 31 is the most important part. new chords are introduced, new rhythm, parlando on the word 'oto' which I cannot translate as anything but 'here you are', 'here it is' and then sigh of surprise and admiration. pause, and merry, dancing chorus again. Looking forward to hearing from you. The words: Dzieciątko się narodziło The baby has been born Wszystek świat uweseliło Brought joy to the world Wesoła nowina O joyful news Powiła nam syna Gave birth to her son Maryja Maria Wzięło na się człowieczeństwo He took humanity Co pokryło jego b DzieciatkoSieNarodzilo.mid DzieciatkoSieNarodzilo.pdf

Hi Vicent, It was already said the music is interesting and it also was said the editing is not the best for reading and performing. Rather than trying to explain I decided to make an example. I have retyped first few bars of your piece. Please have a look at beams, ties and slurs. Well edited music is not only prettier but also easier to perform. AveMarisStella.pdf

Thanks for the first comment/review Matt. Anyone else? I thought about putting it on two staves (and I tried it again just a moment ago) but I just don't like the look of it. And as a choir singer myself I never liked singing from two staves. If you mean it is graphically nice looking score it's all due to LilyPond and being meticulous. I will try to upload another score later on today, something less homophonic, but first I will have to translate the text as this time it will be more important.

hi, I have just updated my post adding basic instructions how to get the file. If you (or anyone) else have problems with downloading my files from rapidshare please let me know and suggest where should I upload it to and I will do my best to make it easier for you.

Hi, A while ago, some six years, I have arranged this folk melody for SATB. To be honest not much of the original melody survived my moulding process but still it is rather arrange than composition. Despite it was written so long ago it was never performed or showed and now when I strayed away from music I don't think it will ever be. But recently when I found a paper copy I decided to retype it in LilyPond to see what people out there would think about it. There is 3 more and I will post them when I'm done redigitalizing them but for now please let me know what do you think. Thanks Michal AniolPasterzomMowil.pdf AniolPasterzomMowil.mid