Hey folks,

A few weeks ago I hit a major milestone with my music-generating
software the Platonic Music Engine:

http://www.platonicmusicengine.com

The software is still very much in alpha meaning there are bugs and
features missing but most importantly there is no friendly graphical
front-end. You interact entirely by editing whichever file you want
corresponding to the style of music you want to create. The software
is in Lua so hopefully editing those files won't be too difficult.

My software aims to create music in any style of music that has ever
existed or ever will exist. It does this algorithmically but instead
of using fancy computer sciency things like neural nets and Markov
chains (I have no idea what either of those things are), the
algorithms are created by hand. You analyze the musical idea you want
to include and program it in allowing room for the pseudo randomly
generated numbers the software produces to be incorporated. It's
probably the least intelligent algorithmically produced music in the
field but it is very flexible and should be able to handle pretty much
anything.

In addition to music it produces standard sheet music (via Lilypond)
and graphical notation (via LaTeX and TikZ).

I'm not a programmer but I have been working on this for two years and
plan on another 3-5 years just to reach the first general public
release (with an online generator). It's written in Lua and is
licensed under the GPL (with the Affero clause) and all the art it
produces is under a liberal CC license.

I use Csound very simply. I've only just learned how to use it so it
has to be simple. And the Csound files are all generated automatically
so it's even more simplistic than what you might imagine. Right now it
produces simple files that use MIDI Soundfonts and one musical style
that uses very simple synthesized sounds (taken nearly verbatim from
the manual). Please feel free to browse my code and suggest any
changes, especially to those files that generate the Csound files.

For a more in-depth look into this recent release please check out two
posts I did on Reddit. The first looks at the underlying features like
setting the tuning (pretty much any tuning imaginable), scale (ditto
even though only a few are programmed in currently), durations,
dynamics, emphasizing scale degrees (tonic, perfect 5th, etc in any
tuning), tempo, etc. The second one looks at the few specific musical
ideas that I've written so far plus examples of scores. I know it's
Reddit but please give my write-ups a chance.

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5fdrj0/please_let_me_introduce_to_you_my_own_music/

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5gp4gx/part_2_of_my_introduction_to_the_platonic_music/

The Csound stuff in my software would not have been possible without
the help of people in this mail list and at /r/csound. Thank you!

Dave Bellows

Csound mailing list
Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
Send bugs reports to
        https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here

Hi! Sounds like a very interesting project! Just to clarify what you said here:

"You analyze the musical idea you want to include and program it in
allowing room for the pseudo randomly generated numbers the software
produces to be incorporated"

Are you saying the end user of your app does this, or do you mean that
you are currently doing this to develop the app?

I don't know how long you've been on this mailing list, and you may or
may not have seen this already, but if you haven't, check out the
website for my app here:

http://algorythmradio.com

It sounds like we might be doing very similar things ;)

On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 12:31 AM, David Bellows  wrote:
> Hey folks,
>
> A few weeks ago I hit a major milestone with my music-generating
> software the Platonic Music Engine:
>
> http://www.platonicmusicengine.com
>
> The software is still very much in alpha meaning there are bugs and
> features missing but most importantly there is no friendly graphical
> front-end. You interact entirely by editing whichever file you want
> corresponding to the style of music you want to create. The software
> is in Lua so hopefully editing those files won't be too difficult.
>
> My software aims to create music in any style of music that has ever
> existed or ever will exist. It does this algorithmically but instead
> of using fancy computer sciency things like neural nets and Markov
> chains (I have no idea what either of those things are), the
> algorithms are created by hand. You analyze the musical idea you want
> to include and program it in allowing room for the pseudo randomly
> generated numbers the software produces to be incorporated. It's
> probably the least intelligent algorithmically produced music in the
> field but it is very flexible and should be able to handle pretty much
> anything.
>
> In addition to music it produces standard sheet music (via Lilypond)
> and graphical notation (via LaTeX and TikZ).
>
> I'm not a programmer but I have been working on this for two years and
> plan on another 3-5 years just to reach the first general public
> release (with an online generator). It's written in Lua and is
> licensed under the GPL (with the Affero clause) and all the art it
> produces is under a liberal CC license.
>
> I use Csound very simply. I've only just learned how to use it so it
> has to be simple. And the Csound files are all generated automatically
> so it's even more simplistic than what you might imagine. Right now it
> produces simple files that use MIDI Soundfonts and one musical style
> that uses very simple synthesized sounds (taken nearly verbatim from
> the manual). Please feel free to browse my code and suggest any
> changes, especially to those files that generate the Csound files.
>
> For a more in-depth look into this recent release please check out two
> posts I did on Reddit. The first looks at the underlying features like
> setting the tuning (pretty much any tuning imaginable), scale (ditto
> even though only a few are programmed in currently), durations,
> dynamics, emphasizing scale degrees (tonic, perfect 5th, etc in any
> tuning), tempo, etc. The second one looks at the few specific musical
> ideas that I've written so far plus examples of scores. I know it's
> Reddit but please give my write-ups a chance.
>
> Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5fdrj0/please_let_me_introduce_to_you_my_own_music/
>
> Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5gp4gx/part_2_of_my_introduction_to_the_platonic_music/
>
> The Csound stuff in my software would not have been possible without
> the help of people in this mail list and at /r/csound. Thank you!
>
> Dave Bellows
>
> Csound mailing list
> Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
> https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
> Send bugs reports to
>         https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here

Thanks!

> Are you saying the end user of your app does this, or do you mean that
you are currently doing this to develop the app?

Ah, I was trying to be concise! The general user just makes simple
choices like the musical style, the scale, instrument, tempo, etc. For
the composer/music theory person who wants to contribute musical ideas
for others to play with into the software (it's GPL and I want people
to contribute!) they have to figure out how to algorithimize that
particular musical idea from scratch and program it in. For example,
the one currently included that mimics a Bach Prelude (Well-Tempered
Clavier) forces the music to follow Bach's original contours and
durations. The specific notes are pseudo-random and are transposed in
octave leaps to fit Bach's pattern.

Here's the page for the Bach followed by an example score:
http://www.platonicmusicengine.com/praeludiumI.html
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5Jk3Yrq1rrdRTQwMUlFM3BqbU0
(The audio is available at the first link)


> I don't know how long you've been on this mailing list, and you may or
may not have seen this already, but if you haven't, check out the
website for my app here:

I wasn't familiar with this but it does look very cool! I imagine we
are taking different approaches to the algorithm bits. I'm guessing
yours are pretty sophisticated and maybe even use some kind of AI
analysis stuff? The bandwidth where I am is horrible so I'm not able
to easily listen to your samples but whereas yours sound really good
mine are more about the user interacting with the musical ideas to
produce something unique to them.

The genres you've chosen allow for the mixing feature you've added and
that's a very cool and clever idea! My software doesn't really have
anything even resembling that but on the other hand it can create
music based on the music of any culture and and any idea anyone has
ever had. Not included in this release was a Style Algorithm using
ancient Greek music theory combined with the poetry of Sappho.

Your approach produces some very cool results and I am very impressed!
I can't to see the final product.

On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 4:42 PM, Peter Burgess
 wrote:
> Hi! Sounds like a very interesting project! Just to clarify what you said here:
>
> "You analyze the musical idea you want to include and program it in
> allowing room for the pseudo randomly generated numbers the software
> produces to be incorporated"
>
> Are you saying the end user of your app does this, or do you mean that
> you are currently doing this to develop the app?
>
> I don't know how long you've been on this mailing list, and you may or
> may not have seen this already, but if you haven't, check out the
> website for my app here:
>
> http://algorythmradio.com
>
> It sounds like we might be doing very similar things ;)
>
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 12:31 AM, David Bellows  wrote:
>> Hey folks,
>>
>> A few weeks ago I hit a major milestone with my music-generating
>> software the Platonic Music Engine:
>>
>> http://www.platonicmusicengine.com
>>
>> The software is still very much in alpha meaning there are bugs and
>> features missing but most importantly there is no friendly graphical
>> front-end. You interact entirely by editing whichever file you want
>> corresponding to the style of music you want to create. The software
>> is in Lua so hopefully editing those files won't be too difficult.
>>
>> My software aims to create music in any style of music that has ever
>> existed or ever will exist. It does this algorithmically but instead
>> of using fancy computer sciency things like neural nets and Markov
>> chains (I have no idea what either of those things are), the
>> algorithms are created by hand. You analyze the musical idea you want
>> to include and program it in allowing room for the pseudo randomly
>> generated numbers the software produces to be incorporated. It's
>> probably the least intelligent algorithmically produced music in the
>> field but it is very flexible and should be able to handle pretty much
>> anything.
>>
>> In addition to music it produces standard sheet music (via Lilypond)
>> and graphical notation (via LaTeX and TikZ).
>>
>> I'm not a programmer but I have been working on this for two years and
>> plan on another 3-5 years just to reach the first general public
>> release (with an online generator). It's written in Lua and is
>> licensed under the GPL (with the Affero clause) and all the art it
>> produces is under a liberal CC license.
>>
>> I use Csound very simply. I've only just learned how to use it so it
>> has to be simple. And the Csound files are all generated automatically
>> so it's even more simplistic than what you might imagine. Right now it
>> produces simple files that use MIDI Soundfonts and one musical style
>> that uses very simple synthesized sounds (taken nearly verbatim from
>> the manual). Please feel free to browse my code and suggest any
>> changes, especially to those files that generate the Csound files.
>>
>> For a more in-depth look into this recent release please check out two
>> posts I did on Reddit. The first looks at the underlying features like
>> setting the tuning (pretty much any tuning imaginable), scale (ditto
>> even though only a few are programmed in currently), durations,
>> dynamics, emphasizing scale degrees (tonic, perfect 5th, etc in any
>> tuning), tempo, etc. The second one looks at the few specific musical
>> ideas that I've written so far plus examples of scores. I know it's
>> Reddit but please give my write-ups a chance.
>>
>> Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5fdrj0/please_let_me_introduce_to_you_my_own_music/
>>
>> Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5gp4gx/part_2_of_my_introduction_to_the_platonic_music/
>>
>> The Csound stuff in my software would not have been possible without
>> the help of people in this mail list and at /r/csound. Thank you!
>>
>> Dave Bellows
>>
>> Csound mailing list
>> Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
>> https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
>> Send bugs reports to
>>         https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>
>
>
> --
> http://algorythmradio.com
> https://soundcloud.com/algorythmradio
>
> Csound mailing list
> Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
> https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
> Send bugs reports to
>         https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here

Csound mailing list
Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
Send bugs reports to
        https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here

> That Bach piece is sounding good!

Thank you! And it's actually a lot of fun to play with. You change the
scale and do things like it tell it to use more major thirds and fewer
perfect fourths and then recompile. You can't control the specific
notes but you can control the probability that certain things happen.

> I considered adding more user interaction with my app for a while, but I decided to keep it purely as a music player,

Yours is perfect as a music player. I would think you'd want to keep
the choices pretty simple like the genres. Mine is more about the
interaction, though I do have plans for custom radio stations as well.

> So I'm guessing from what you've said so far, that you can use any temperament?

Yep, from 0-EDO to around 30 million-EDO (or wherever the software
craps out) including fractional EDOs (like pi). And it doesn't have to
be octaves but equal divisions of any interval. And of course just
about any other pre-computed turning you want like any Just
Intonation, Pythagorean, Harry Partch's 43 tone system, Bohlen-Pierce,
Wendy Carlos's tunings, etc. And it was all made super easy thanks to
Csound allowing me to use specific audio frequencies with MIDI
soundfonts (I used MIDI before and it was a pain in the ass!).

> I wasn't sure if that would scare people off or not, haha! I'll save that secret until later on ;)

For your project the alternate tunings probably aren't that essential.
I want my software to appeal to hardcore music nerds too so I've tried
to make it as hardcore nerdy as possible. Plus, of course, tunings
from other musical cultures.

> I'm. Looking forward to seeing where your project goes man!

Thank you! I spend nearly all my time on it -- it's all I do. I have
high hopes for it!

On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 5:18 PM, Peter Burgess
 wrote:
> Thanks! I can't wait to finally get to a position where I can release public
> test versions. My development took a festive for about 6 months, and I'm
> finally picking it back up only recently, haha.
>
> It does sound like you've got some good novel ideas going on in your
> project, sounds like some impressive stuff. That Bach piece is sounding
> good! I considered adding more user interaction with my app for a while, but
> I decided to keep it purely as a music player, it's getting complacated
> enough! Haha. As for how I've made it, it is in fact all by hand aswell. I
> have ideas for AI implementations to help with certain aspects of
> development, but at the moment it's all human crafted! Except the actual
> music obviously ;)
>
> So I'm guessing from what you've said so far, that you can use any
> temperament? That's something that I've had on my app from the start too,
> and I have personally listened to it playing in wacky temperaments... But
> I've not yet shown this to the public, I wasn't sure if that would scare
> people off or not, haha! I'll save that secret until later on ;) I've also
> not publicly shown any scale but Bmaj if I remember rightly... Not because I
> can't, I've just not bothered changing it yet. That's waaaaay down my list
> of priorities...  Luckily, I don't think anyone's noticed yet, haha!
>
> I'm. Looking forward to seeing where your project goes man!
>
> On 14 Dec 2016 1:00 a.m., "David Bellows"  wrote:
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> > Are you saying the end user of your app does this, or do you mean that
>> you are currently doing this to develop the app?
>>
>> Ah, I was trying to be concise! The general user just makes simple
>> choices like the musical style, the scale, instrument, tempo, etc. For
>> the composer/music theory person who wants to contribute musical ideas
>> for others to play with into the software (it's GPL and I want people
>> to contribute!) they have to figure out how to algorithimize that
>> particular musical idea from scratch and program it in. For example,
>> the one currently included that mimics a Bach Prelude (Well-Tempered
>> Clavier) forces the music to follow Bach's original contours and
>> durations. The specific notes are pseudo-random and are transposed in
>> octave leaps to fit Bach's pattern.
>>
>> Here's the page for the Bach followed by an example score:
>> http://www.platonicmusicengine.com/praeludiumI.html
>> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5Jk3Yrq1rrdRTQwMUlFM3BqbU0
>> (The audio is available at the first link)
>>
>>
>> > I don't know how long you've been on this mailing list, and you may or
>> may not have seen this already, but if you haven't, check out the
>> website for my app here:
>>
>> I wasn't familiar with this but it does look very cool! I imagine we
>> are taking different approaches to the algorithm bits. I'm guessing
>> yours are pretty sophisticated and maybe even use some kind of AI
>> analysis stuff? The bandwidth where I am is horrible so I'm not able
>> to easily listen to your samples but whereas yours sound really good
>> mine are more about the user interacting with the musical ideas to
>> produce something unique to them.
>>
>> The genres you've chosen allow for the mixing feature you've added and
>> that's a very cool and clever idea! My software doesn't really have
>> anything even resembling that but on the other hand it can create
>> music based on the music of any culture and and any idea anyone has
>> ever had. Not included in this release was a Style Algorithm using
>> ancient Greek music theory combined with the poetry of Sappho.
>>
>> Your approach produces some very cool results and I am very impressed!
>> I can't to see the final product.
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 4:42 PM, Peter Burgess
>>  wrote:
>> > Hi! Sounds like a very interesting project! Just to clarify what you
>> > said here:
>> >
>> > "You analyze the musical idea you want to include and program it in
>> > allowing room for the pseudo randomly generated numbers the software
>> > produces to be incorporated"
>> >
>> > Are you saying the end user of your app does this, or do you mean that
>> > you are currently doing this to develop the app?
>> >
>> > I don't know how long you've been on this mailing list, and you may or
>> > may not have seen this already, but if you haven't, check out the
>> > website for my app here:
>> >
>> > http://algorythmradio.com
>> >
>> > It sounds like we might be doing very similar things ;)
>> >
>> > On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 12:31 AM, David Bellows 
>> > wrote:
>> >> Hey folks,
>> >>
>> >> A few weeks ago I hit a major milestone with my music-generating
>> >> software the Platonic Music Engine:
>> >>
>> >> http://www.platonicmusicengine.com
>> >>
>> >> The software is still very much in alpha meaning there are bugs and
>> >> features missing but most importantly there is no friendly graphical
>> >> front-end. You interact entirely by editing whichever file you want
>> >> corresponding to the style of music you want to create. The software
>> >> is in Lua so hopefully editing those files won't be too difficult.
>> >>
>> >> My software aims to create music in any style of music that has ever
>> >> existed or ever will exist. It does this algorithmically but instead
>> >> of using fancy computer sciency things like neural nets and Markov
>> >> chains (I have no idea what either of those things are), the
>> >> algorithms are created by hand. You analyze the musical idea you want
>> >> to include and program it in allowing room for the pseudo randomly
>> >> generated numbers the software produces to be incorporated. It's
>> >> probably the least intelligent algorithmically produced music in the
>> >> field but it is very flexible and should be able to handle pretty much
>> >> anything.
>> >>
>> >> In addition to music it produces standard sheet music (via Lilypond)
>> >> and graphical notation (via LaTeX and TikZ).
>> >>
>> >> I'm not a programmer but I have been working on this for two years and
>> >> plan on another 3-5 years just to reach the first general public
>> >> release (with an online generator). It's written in Lua and is
>> >> licensed under the GPL (with the Affero clause) and all the art it
>> >> produces is under a liberal CC license.
>> >>
>> >> I use Csound very simply. I've only just learned how to use it so it
>> >> has to be simple. And the Csound files are all generated automatically
>> >> so it's even more simplistic than what you might imagine. Right now it
>> >> produces simple files that use MIDI Soundfonts and one musical style
>> >> that uses very simple synthesized sounds (taken nearly verbatim from
>> >> the manual). Please feel free to browse my code and suggest any
>> >> changes, especially to those files that generate the Csound files.
>> >>
>> >> For a more in-depth look into this recent release please check out two
>> >> posts I did on Reddit. The first looks at the underlying features like
>> >> setting the tuning (pretty much any tuning imaginable), scale (ditto
>> >> even though only a few are programmed in currently), durations,
>> >> dynamics, emphasizing scale degrees (tonic, perfect 5th, etc in any
>> >> tuning), tempo, etc. The second one looks at the few specific musical
>> >> ideas that I've written so far plus examples of scores. I know it's
>> >> Reddit but please give my write-ups a chance.
>> >>
>> >> Part 1:
>> >> https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5fdrj0/please_let_me_introduce_to_you_my_own_music/
>> >>
>> >> Part 2:
>> >> https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5gp4gx/part_2_of_my_introduction_to_the_platonic_music/
>> >>
>> >> The Csound stuff in my software would not have been possible without
>> >> the help of people in this mail list and at /r/csound. Thank you!
>> >>
>> >> Dave Bellows
>> >>
>> >> Csound mailing list
>> >> Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
>> >> https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
>> >> Send bugs reports to
>> >>         https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
>> >> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > http://algorythmradio.com
>> > https://soundcloud.com/algorythmradio
>> >
>> > Csound mailing list
>> > Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
>> > https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
>> > Send bugs reports to
>> >         https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
>> > Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>
>> Csound mailing list
>> Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
>> https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
>> Send bugs reports to
>>         https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>
> Csound mailing list Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
> https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND Send bugs reports to
> https://github.com/csound/csound/issues Discussions of bugs and features can
> be posted here

Csound mailing list
Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
Send bugs reports to
        https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here

> 3000000 EDO huh? Haha. That's essentially just random frequencies ready set out in a logarithmic manor ;)

Yeah, I didn't set out to do 30 million-EDO but once the math was in
place it just worked. Getting 0<=n<=1 EDOs working were actually
trickier (due to the way data is handled). The Xen Wiki lists
6,796,263-EDO as the largest one it has an article for (even though
there is no actual article there) so at least I wanted to make sure I
supported that many equal divisions. Of course Csound can handle even
bigger numbers, something like 11 quadrillion-EDO.

> Now I think about it, that will just be a particular scale of 15EDO, still good fun to listen to though!

Definitely. I like to do something like use a blues scale with a weird
tuning like 13.1-EDO (that way there are no 2:1 octaves). The software
figures out which intervals in the tuning are closest to the ideal
versions and uses them for things like scales (which I think results
in a very flat minor third and noticeably sharped perfect fifth).

On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 5:50 PM, Peter Burgess
 wrote:
> Yeah, algorythm radio is nearly all I do too! Aside from those 6 months of
> slacking... Haha.
>
> 3000000 EDO huh? Haha. That's essentially just random frequencies ready set
> out in a logarithmic manor ;) you're right though, it's probably not as
> important for my app, and utilising different tunings has made my app a fair
> bit more complex... But I am a hardcore experimental musician, so that's
> really just for me ;) I've got blends of different EDO too, I can't remember
> if this is right now, but I think they two I tried were 5EDO mixed with
> 3EDO, both with a common pitch, and also 2EDO mixed with 3EDO, again with a
> common pitch. I really liked the 5 and 3 blend. Now I think about it, that
> will just be a particular scale of 15EDO, still good fun to listen to
> though!
>
> On 14 Dec 2016 1:32 a.m., "David Bellows"  wrote:
>>
>> > That Bach piece is sounding good!
>>
>> Thank you! And it's actually a lot of fun to play with. You change the
>> scale and do things like it tell it to use more major thirds and fewer
>> perfect fourths and then recompile. You can't control the specific
>> notes but you can control the probability that certain things happen.
>>
>> > I considered adding more user interaction with my app for a while, but I
>> > decided to keep it purely as a music player,
>>
>> Yours is perfect as a music player. I would think you'd want to keep
>> the choices pretty simple like the genres. Mine is more about the
>> interaction, though I do have plans for custom radio stations as well.
>>
>> > So I'm guessing from what you've said so far, that you can use any
>> > temperament?
>>
>> Yep, from 0-EDO to around 30 million-EDO (or wherever the software
>> craps out) including fractional EDOs (like pi). And it doesn't have to
>> be octaves but equal divisions of any interval. And of course just
>> about any other pre-computed turning you want like any Just
>> Intonation, Pythagorean, Harry Partch's 43 tone system, Bohlen-Pierce,
>> Wendy Carlos's tunings, etc. And it was all made super easy thanks to
>> Csound allowing me to use specific audio frequencies with MIDI
>> soundfonts (I used MIDI before and it was a pain in the ass!).
>>
>> > I wasn't sure if that would scare people off or not, haha! I'll save
>> > that secret until later on ;)
>>
>> For your project the alternate tunings probably aren't that essential.
>> I want my software to appeal to hardcore music nerds too so I've tried
>> to make it as hardcore nerdy as possible. Plus, of course, tunings
>> from other musical cultures.
>>
>> > I'm. Looking forward to seeing where your project goes man!
>>
>> Thank you! I spend nearly all my time on it -- it's all I do. I have
>> high hopes for it!
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 5:18 PM, Peter Burgess
>>  wrote:
>> > Thanks! I can't wait to finally get to a position where I can release
>> > public
>> > test versions. My development took a festive for about 6 months, and I'm
>> > finally picking it back up only recently, haha.
>> >
>> > It does sound like you've got some good novel ideas going on in your
>> > project, sounds like some impressive stuff. That Bach piece is sounding
>> > good! I considered adding more user interaction with my app for a while,
>> > but
>> > I decided to keep it purely as a music player, it's getting complacated
>> > enough! Haha. As for how I've made it, it is in fact all by hand aswell.
>> > I
>> > have ideas for AI implementations to help with certain aspects of
>> > development, but at the moment it's all human crafted! Except the actual
>> > music obviously ;)
>> >
>> > So I'm guessing from what you've said so far, that you can use any
>> > temperament? That's something that I've had on my app from the start
>> > too,
>> > and I have personally listened to it playing in wacky temperaments...
>> > But
>> > I've not yet shown this to the public, I wasn't sure if that would scare
>> > people off or not, haha! I'll save that secret until later on ;) I've
>> > also
>> > not publicly shown any scale but Bmaj if I remember rightly... Not
>> > because I
>> > can't, I've just not bothered changing it yet. That's waaaaay down my
>> > list
>> > of priorities...  Luckily, I don't think anyone's noticed yet, haha!
>> >
>> > I'm. Looking forward to seeing where your project goes man!
>> >
>> > On 14 Dec 2016 1:00 a.m., "David Bellows"  wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Thanks!
>> >>
>> >> > Are you saying the end user of your app does this, or do you mean
>> >> > that
>> >> you are currently doing this to develop the app?
>> >>
>> >> Ah, I was trying to be concise! The general user just makes simple
>> >> choices like the musical style, the scale, instrument, tempo, etc. For
>> >> the composer/music theory person who wants to contribute musical ideas
>> >> for others to play with into the software (it's GPL and I want people
>> >> to contribute!) they have to figure out how to algorithimize that
>> >> particular musical idea from scratch and program it in. For example,
>> >> the one currently included that mimics a Bach Prelude (Well-Tempered
>> >> Clavier) forces the music to follow Bach's original contours and
>> >> durations. The specific notes are pseudo-random and are transposed in
>> >> octave leaps to fit Bach's pattern.
>> >>
>> >> Here's the page for the Bach followed by an example score:
>> >> http://www.platonicmusicengine.com/praeludiumI.html
>> >> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5Jk3Yrq1rrdRTQwMUlFM3BqbU0
>> >> (The audio is available at the first link)
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> > I don't know how long you've been on this mailing list, and you may
>> >> > or
>> >> may not have seen this already, but if you haven't, check out the
>> >> website for my app here:
>> >>
>> >> I wasn't familiar with this but it does look very cool! I imagine we
>> >> are taking different approaches to the algorithm bits. I'm guessing
>> >> yours are pretty sophisticated and maybe even use some kind of AI
>> >> analysis stuff? The bandwidth where I am is horrible so I'm not able
>> >> to easily listen to your samples but whereas yours sound really good
>> >> mine are more about the user interacting with the musical ideas to
>> >> produce something unique to them.
>> >>
>> >> The genres you've chosen allow for the mixing feature you've added and
>> >> that's a very cool and clever idea! My software doesn't really have
>> >> anything even resembling that but on the other hand it can create
>> >> music based on the music of any culture and and any idea anyone has
>> >> ever had. Not included in this release was a Style Algorithm using
>> >> ancient Greek music theory combined with the poetry of Sappho.
>> >>
>> >> Your approach produces some very cool results and I am very impressed!
>> >> I can't to see the final product.
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 4:42 PM, Peter Burgess
>> >>  wrote:
>> >> > Hi! Sounds like a very interesting project! Just to clarify what you
>> >> > said here:
>> >> >
>> >> > "You analyze the musical idea you want to include and program it in
>> >> > allowing room for the pseudo randomly generated numbers the software
>> >> > produces to be incorporated"
>> >> >
>> >> > Are you saying the end user of your app does this, or do you mean
>> >> > that
>> >> > you are currently doing this to develop the app?
>> >> >
>> >> > I don't know how long you've been on this mailing list, and you may
>> >> > or
>> >> > may not have seen this already, but if you haven't, check out the
>> >> > website for my app here:
>> >> >
>> >> > http://algorythmradio.com
>> >> >
>> >> > It sounds like we might be doing very similar things ;)
>> >> >
>> >> > On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 12:31 AM, David Bellows
>> >> > 
>> >> > wrote:
>> >> >> Hey folks,
>> >> >>
>> >> >> A few weeks ago I hit a major milestone with my music-generating
>> >> >> software the Platonic Music Engine:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> http://www.platonicmusicengine.com
>> >> >>
>> >> >> The software is still very much in alpha meaning there are bugs and
>> >> >> features missing but most importantly there is no friendly graphical
>> >> >> front-end. You interact entirely by editing whichever file you want
>> >> >> corresponding to the style of music you want to create. The software
>> >> >> is in Lua so hopefully editing those files won't be too difficult.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> My software aims to create music in any style of music that has ever
>> >> >> existed or ever will exist. It does this algorithmically but instead
>> >> >> of using fancy computer sciency things like neural nets and Markov
>> >> >> chains (I have no idea what either of those things are), the
>> >> >> algorithms are created by hand. You analyze the musical idea you
>> >> >> want
>> >> >> to include and program it in allowing room for the pseudo randomly
>> >> >> generated numbers the software produces to be incorporated. It's
>> >> >> probably the least intelligent algorithmically produced music in the
>> >> >> field but it is very flexible and should be able to handle pretty
>> >> >> much
>> >> >> anything.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> In addition to music it produces standard sheet music (via Lilypond)
>> >> >> and graphical notation (via LaTeX and TikZ).
>> >> >>
>> >> >> I'm not a programmer but I have been working on this for two years
>> >> >> and
>> >> >> plan on another 3-5 years just to reach the first general public
>> >> >> release (with an online generator). It's written in Lua and is
>> >> >> licensed under the GPL (with the Affero clause) and all the art it
>> >> >> produces is under a liberal CC license.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> I use Csound very simply. I've only just learned how to use it so it
>> >> >> has to be simple. And the Csound files are all generated
>> >> >> automatically
>> >> >> so it's even more simplistic than what you might imagine. Right now
>> >> >> it
>> >> >> produces simple files that use MIDI Soundfonts and one musical style
>> >> >> that uses very simple synthesized sounds (taken nearly verbatim from
>> >> >> the manual). Please feel free to browse my code and suggest any
>> >> >> changes, especially to those files that generate the Csound files.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> For a more in-depth look into this recent release please check out
>> >> >> two
>> >> >> posts I did on Reddit. The first looks at the underlying features
>> >> >> like
>> >> >> setting the tuning (pretty much any tuning imaginable), scale (ditto
>> >> >> even though only a few are programmed in currently), durations,
>> >> >> dynamics, emphasizing scale degrees (tonic, perfect 5th, etc in any
>> >> >> tuning), tempo, etc. The second one looks at the few specific
>> >> >> musical
>> >> >> ideas that I've written so far plus examples of scores. I know it's
>> >> >> Reddit but please give my write-ups a chance.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Part 1:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5fdrj0/please_let_me_introduce_to_you_my_own_music/
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Part 2:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/5gp4gx/part_2_of_my_introduction_to_the_platonic_music/
>> >> >>
>> >> >> The Csound stuff in my software would not have been possible without
>> >> >> the help of people in this mail list and at /r/csound. Thank you!
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Dave Bellows
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Csound mailing list
>> >> >> Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
>> >> >> https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
>> >> >> Send bugs reports to
>> >> >>         https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
>> >> >> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > --
>> >> > http://algorythmradio.com
>> >> > https://soundcloud.com/algorythmradio
>> >> >
>> >> > Csound mailing list
>> >> > Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
>> >> > https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
>> >> > Send bugs reports to
>> >> >         https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
>> >> > Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> >>
>> >> Csound mailing list
>> >> Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
>> >> https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
>> >> Send bugs reports to
>> >>         https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
>> >> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> >
>> > Csound mailing list Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
>> > https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND Send bugs reports to
>> > https://github.com/csound/csound/issues Discussions of bugs and features
>> > can
>> > be posted here
>>
>> Csound mailing list
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>> https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
>> Send bugs reports to
>>         https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>
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