MusicDNA Composer

Hello YC.

I wanted to show everyone a new music composition application I've written. My hope is that it becomes the premier Web 2.0 app for composing tonal music, so it should be helpful to all you tonal composers.

MusicDNACentral.net - main page

MusicDNA Composer

The GUI for the application is as easy to use as I could make it. It's very classical/romantic-oriented: it takes care of harmonic progressions, keys, etc, and lets the composer focus on creating melody and harmony. It'd be a real challenge to write atonal music with it.

In addition to the composition app, you can also share your own midis/mp3s. Please feel free to post whatever you like. Here's a short sonata-form movement I recently wrote:

Candlelight Sonata

Any comments you have would be greatly appreciated. I think that if people keep adding to the musical material that's available, wiki-style, this thing could grow pretty big.

P.S. If anyone is interested in helping to test the application (it is still in public beta mode), I'm looking for about 5 people to run through a test plan I have written up in MS Word. It'll take about an hour, and I'll PayPal $15 for the completed test plan. If you're interested, please email me at rienzi (at) musicdnacentral.net.

I don't really find this idea too appealing. For one thing, David Cope has done something much more sophisticated which produces a bit more interesting results, and can also produce music regardless of style.

Secondly, I really don't think that it does anything more than what most people from in here can do on their own, even if they're only attempting at imitating a classical/romantic style. If the computer did the imitation better than them, then it would be worth it, but if it doesn't, then I'd stick to the people who actually "made" the styles, instead of some cheap imitation.

But generally, I think that the more distant you are from your composition, the less it contains a part of yourself and the less human it is. I had this discussion with my teacher the other day, and he basically said that with paper, the contact with what you write is very simple, it's just your hand going to the pencil, writing on the paper. You're much closer to the music. Already by just composing directly at the computer, you have to look at a screen which shows things that don't really exist (everything is virtual), then you move a mouse, which is a very complicated machine in itself, which causes some electric currents to go through the mouse, the processor and a million other parts in the computer, then the mouse moves the pointer on the screen, and then you click with your mouse to write notes on a very complex program which was made by other people (the computer has also been made by machines), and eventually you write a note. The distance between what you write and you is a lot bigger than with manuscript paper. So, your software makes that distance even bigger, if you "save" composers the trouble of writing their own music.

In any case, that's my opinion, and you're eligible to disagree with it of course, which I'll find absolutely logical since you've spent a lot of time and effort to write this program.

It'd be a real challenge to write atonal music with it.

You make it sound like a weapon against people who write in a non 18-19th century tonal way :P

The music is very tonal - pleasant and smooth and seems free from errors (although when one has got used to atonal it is harder to spot such errors). Perhaps too smooth and lacking surprises.

Once one has got used to software such as Finale, the mechanics of entering notes becomes quite automatic just as when you walk you think of where to go not how to bend your knees etc. The internal complexities of Finale aren't IMO any barrier to creativity - I don't worry about them (until they don't work :) ).

It should be possible to have a choice of styles - the type of atonal that uses a tone set ( restricting all notes to a subset of the 12 ) such as in one of the recent challenges could be implemented.

One of the problems with software like MusicDNA is that people don't think alike and the differences can be greater when it comes to creative processes. The software will suit at least its creator but possibly not many others.

But it is an interesting experiment.

Herb

The application is a tool for rapidly creating music based on pitch, duration, volume, and instrument. David Cope's EMI is an analysis and synthesis machine, which is more of a synthetic musical brain. MusicDNA Composer is more like having a room full of scribes on pianos which you can shout orders to: "Build me a melody on IV which goes up to the 5th stepwise in eighths, then down to the root in quarters," then they'll create the score and play it for you. Don't like it? Have it done again a little differently. Candlelight Sonata was written in this way, step-by-step, it was not auto-generated in any way.

But, since it's a new tool, I wouldn't expect it to replace anyone's favorite tool, such as Finale or Sibelius. If you've spent years mastering those applications, then indeed, as Euler says, it is as natural as breathing and there might not be any reason to switch.

However, since MusicDNA is a web-app, it does have some advantages to doing it with software or the old fashioned way, on paper. First, it's collaborative. If someone writes a melody they like, they can save it, wiki-style, and anyone else can use it in their songs. It can be a challenge to find, analyze and extract melodies or other patterns from others' music using Finale/MusicXML, etc. Second, it's super-sharable. When you make your music available publicly, you'll get a URL which you can easily distribute, youtube style. Finally, it's beginner/kid friendly. Since there'll be a large library of user-created melodies, harmonies, motives and other predefined patterns of music, as well as a colorful GUI for arranging these basic elements of music, it is easy to quickly create music of high informational content.

Oh yeah, it is possible to do different styles such as the restriction of tones to a given set, but it requires that you know how to write MusicDNA code (based on perl) to do so, which, incidentally, is how you'd get around pretty much any restriction that the GUI presents. I realize this is a bit much to ask of people though :)

I had tried a much earlier version of MusicDNA. The new version is a lot more powerful but, and a big but, it is now very complicated.

There is a technical problem with the cursor shape - sometimes it is the standard hand indicating a click will do something but sometimes it is the text edit cursor. I found this confusing.

On the plus side, it didn't crash. On the negative side, I got lost and wasn't able to create anything to play back.

I would say the interface needs work. And a user's manual is necessary as it is not a trivial self-evident interface.

I wish you good luck with this endeavour.

Euler,

Thanks again for your helpful comments.

I've been staring at the interface for so long that I guess I'm surprised when people don't know how to use it instantly, ha. You're right, it's definitely non-trivial. I am in the process of making some how-to videos, I think that'll help a lot. I'm also still looking for testers, only one person has asked about it so far.

I'll try and have some videos done next week or so.

Well, I still encourage people to sign up. You can still create accounts and upload your midis/mp3s for sharing. And, if you've got time to figure out the interface, you can still make music with the composition app.

Re: not getting any playback, you're probably not hitting OK after adding phrases/chords...I should make it green. Not sure about the cursor shape thing, I'll keep my eye out.

It didn't work at all...I found the user interface very confusing, although it seems fairly well programmed, but I find the whole idea absolutely absurd.

But whatever.

It's 20% composing at best. (Oh, and I spotted plenty of errors in examples I heard...I couldn't get my own to work, but I heard other people's mp3s).

When it's 20% we complain it's too little

some rubbish from apple which do 90% composing, we say it's too much! :D

I'll have a go later on today Rienzi and best of luck to you, from over here. :)

I mean: the input of the *human* is reduced to being very low. It's almost not composing.

Hey all.

Since people are having trouble with the interface, I'm working on a quick-n-dirty introductory video on to how to use the GUI, it'll be done tomorrow. I've got some better ones on the way though for next week...

Daniel, there are many possibilities to be explored with it. Right now it only offers the very basics to work with: diatonically oriented chords, phrases, rests, and the simplest of motives. But the lego-like nature of these musical bits, along with the collaborative nature of a web application, will allow them to be built upon and built upon in an infinite variety.

I suppose it will take some time and a lot of effort for me to make my vision of its usefulness plain on the first viewing, just as new music takes a while to establish itself.

Here's a quick demo video to get everyone started:

http://musicdnacentral.net/downloads/demo001.html

The app:

MusicDNA Composer

I'll have a series of better videos in a week or two.

Wow, I tried this and all I got was a really strange riff sequence which in the end sounded like a robotic deaf screech. Guess my midi playback is fucked up...