Electronic Music

Here is an application intended to draw emergent properties from general purpose computers. This is in the tradition of the west coast modular synth, in the sense that it sacrifices ease of use for surprise.

The mouse position rotates a polytope. The roller button rotates the projection plane. The buttons switch between ends of the projection line. The polytope region volumes are noise volumes. The space boundaries are tone filters. The projection plane areas are durations. The projection plane boundaries are envelope filters. The projection line lengths are tempos. The projection line boundaries are rhythmic filters. Function keys (un)lock boundaries, (un)fill regions. Configuration file contains metric and boundary mappings. Branching history allows branching playback. Create new branches relative to other branches.

Just as the effect of multiple color filters is cumulative, so is the effect of multiple tone filters. Similarly, the effect of multiple envelope or rhythm "filters" should be cumulative. Thus, retained are the volume area length metrics, but lost are the filter orderings, except as deduced from adjacency.

The product of the three dimensional tone filters is the richest in the sense that they are repeating waveforms. The two dimensional filters, though geometrically more numerous, are less rich in the sense that they produce unrepeated envelopes, or potions of waveforms. Note that the specification of envelope filter is still a vector of harmonic amplitudes. The one dimensional filters are again geometrically more numerous, but less rich, thus. They not only produce unrepeated phrases, they interpret the negative portions of the waveform as silence, ignoring any negative information.

Another enhancement would be feedback. Thus, when a note plays, the region responsible for it could go on to the next fundamental tone. Generally, each projected region could go on to the next parameter. To avoid expressing my incompetence at harmony and melody, the parameters could be chosen by 1/f randomness or modulo one golden ratio increments.

Escape key halts recording and rotation, allowing mouse lift. Continuity is preserved across pauses by interpreting mouse and roller button motions as accelerations instead of motions. Discontinuities are allowed by enabling rotation and rate change separate from recording. Loops are recorded by interpolating from one branch to another and going to playback mode. Switching to record mode starts a new branch relative to the current in the sense that the rotation rates start from where the branch started.