Blossomer is a probabilistic melody maker by David Su. It takes as input a single voice of melody (represented by notes with pitch and rhythm attributes), performs single-order Markov chain analysis to calculate probabilities, then outputs an infinitely recurring melody generated using a simple sine wave.
Despite the program's primitivity you can still hear it churn out something "new" while retaining the original "flavor" of a melody. Additionally, the different methods of playback generation yield noticeably different results. Check out the to-do list below for plans on making Blossomer more powerful!
Piano keys adapted from Peter Coles' JavaScript Piano. BPM tap button adapted from Rich Reel's Tap for BPM. MIDI to Hz formula taken from Subsynth.
Future features (to-do list):
- More advanced methods of analysis, especially the ability to take into account higher levels of structure (e.g. groups of notes as phrases, 8-bar structures, overall musical form) as well as melodic variation and embellishment
- On that note, a better sense of rhythmic cognizance
- Capability to "mix" different melodies by combining their probability tables
- Addition of "noise"/chaos to control how far away to stray from the original melody
- Alternate methods of melodic generation such as those based purely on intervallic relationships or talea + color extraction
- A more robust audio interface (beyond a simple sine wave)
- Ability to easily re-blossom the probabilistically generated melodies
- Control of output size, rather than an infinitely recurring melody
log:
1/21/13: += auto input generator, 2 new playback generation methods, playback visualizer
1/10/13: first build
about | index | faq |
contact