France MU 3620 Project

Final Project

Owen France (D19)

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Explanation

My project is an extension of my mapping assignment, except with a number of improvements, which are explained below. For the last assignment, the input string was an entire paragraph from JFK's moon speech, while for this version, the much shorter excerpt "Because they are hard" is used instead. The new program is capable of making more music from less input. It is also worth noting that while this particular song may not sound particularly exciting, it is simply a demonstration of the more sophisticated program with a single short input string, and the program can be used to much different effect, and subsequently converted to different tempos and timbres.

Previously, words were converted to chords and letters were converted to scale tones. Now, words are converted to tonal centers and letters are converted to chords in that key. This way, rather than jumping between random chords, the chord progression has some sort of context to it, and it doesn't stray from that context for the entire duration of the word. Also, by expanding the chords to 7ths, the new program can make full use of major 7th, minor 7th, dominant, and half diminished chords where the previous version was limited to random notes in either the major or minor keys (natural minor only). While this does come at the expense of melody, the melody in the previous version provided an inconsistent rhythm and very random tonality that didn't lend itself well to recreational listening.

The new version is intended to be much more functional rather than just a curiosity like the last one. A composer could actually potentially use these chords as a jumping off point and write a melody over them. This program, which offers a greater variety of chords that are more related to each other, represents a considerable improvement from the earlier version.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get a feature working that I had very much wanted to incorporate: a direct MATLAB output to midi. Instead, just like in the previous version, notes have to be entered into your music notation software/DAW of choice by hand as opposed to a midi that could be not only imported, but manipulated as desired. Had I been able to get this working it would represent a huge time saver because I could just run the program and have a piece of audio immediately and without having to do anything manually. However, to improve once more on the previous piece, this time I entered in chords in a nearest-way progression, and inverted consecutive identical chords (as happened three times in this case) to keep the listener's interest, although in a few cases this had the unintended consequence of making what was originally a minor 7th chord into a major triad +6 in a different key.

Future versions would hopefully improve on chord selection, re-add melody functionality, and include automation.