[HN Gopher] Music Mouse
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Music Mouse
Author : raldu
Score : 352 points
Date : 2022-11-19 10:36 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (teropa.info)
(TXT) w3m dump (teropa.info)
| jjarvis wrote:
| Nice! I expect to see more applications like this with the
| introduction of Max's RNBO library a few weeks back.
| wantsanagent wrote:
| Wow, this is probably the most intuitively enjoyable music tool
| I've ever used.
|
| I'm not a musician and I know very little about what makes music
| good, but playing with this tool felt like I was hearing a better
| version of my own imagination. Like those scenes in movies where
| people can suddenly play music and have no idea how they're doing
| it.
| dmix wrote:
| It's rare to have an instrument where anything you do sounds
| good!
| unglaublich wrote:
| That's the magic of music theory: it constraints the space of
| all possible invocations of an instrument to those that are
| theoretically correct. Our 'random input' is fit upon the
| closest match that yields a music-theoretical correct
| outcome.
| rzzzt wrote:
| PG Music's Band-in-a-Box still exists, but way back in the
| Windows 3.1 era it already had a "snap to pleasant notes"
| feature if you wanted to play along a set of chords on a MIDI
| piano. It could also play chords in the style of famous
| musicians along with your never-ever-bad notes! I always
| switched it to the "Erroll Garner" preset and hammered away.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band-in-a-Box
| disillusioned wrote:
| Wow, it's like a Keith Jarrett improv generator!
| dmd wrote:
| Similar to: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/soundprism/id386833491
| mojifwisi wrote:
| Nice! That guy also made this interactive version of Terry
| Riley's "In C": https://teropa.info/in-c/
| drew-y wrote:
| Is there a way to move the mouse without playing a key? I am
| using a touchpad, so maybe it can't be done without an actual
| mouse.
| abruzzi wrote:
| I played with the original a long time ago. IIRC, back then
| Laurie Spiegel asked for some kind of credit on music that was
| generated by it given that the musical output would be bounded by
| the software design.
|
| Also, if you've never heard her album Unseen Worlds, its
| definitly worth checking out.
| trynewideas wrote:
| By total chance, this revealed a flaw with my mouse that's been
| haunting me for months.
|
| My right mouse button intermittently doesn't bring up context
| menus, which I seemingly confirmed by recording the screen and
| visualizing click events in a presentation mode. It would show
| what looked like one right click, but no context menu, or a
| context menu that appeared and was immediately dismissed.
|
| But this revealed that it's actually rapidly sending multiple
| logical clicks per physical click. The logical clicks are fast
| enough that the screen recordings didn't differentiate them as
| separate events - which sent me in the wrong direction, making me
| think the OS was disregarding clicks. But here, the multiple
| clicks are clearly audible.
|
| So thanks!
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| I've had this problem on _so_ many mice over the years, going
| back to the Amiga days. Often it can be fixed by opening the
| mouse and gluing a tiny bit of thin card to the nub which
| presses on the microswitch. (Usually the problem is just that
| the plastic has worn down over the years and no longer pushes
| the button quite far enough to make a clean contact.)
| isatty wrote:
| Interesting, I'd expect mice to come with hardware debounce
| by default.
| cstrahan wrote:
| There's an article (on modifying mice with hardware
| debouncing) that talks a bit about this:
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hack-mouse-click-do-
| it-...
|
| > This is one more example of perfectly good theory not
| getting used in practice to save pennies per unit and also
| to perpetuate planned obsolescence. That is, sales would
| drop if you no longer needed a new mouse every two to four
| years as a result of glitchy buttons.
|
| FWIW, the [1]Zaunkoenig brand is where I first heard about
| this. I have their M1K and M2K mice, which are really nice.
| (I am otherwise unaffiliated with them)
|
| [1]:
| https://zaunkoenig.co/blogs/blog/zaunkoenig-m1k-firmware
| pigcat wrote:
| With your hand on the mouse, move it up and down a couple
| millimetres quickly, like you're scratching an itch. This makes
| quite a nice song.
| tkam wrote:
| Nice! One problem: There's digital clipping. I suspect that the
| four samples are normalized individually, and when playing at the
| same time the transients add up to over 0dB. On quality
| headphones (beyerdynamic dt770 for me) it is quite audible. It
| happens with the piano and the synth sample, but is more audible
| with the piano sample.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Additive digital clipping would be happening in your device.
| You should be able to resolve it by turning your OS volume
| down. This website could use a volume slider for each voice,
| though.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _You should be able to resolve it by turning your OS volume
| down._
|
| It doesn't resolve it, the clipping happens in the audio
| generation before the OS does anything with it.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Clipping can occur at any gain stage, not just the final
| output
| codazoda wrote:
| Is that the sort of "scratch" or "crunch" I hear from my
| Sennheiser HD 4.50's or is it something else?
|
| At first, I didn't even notice it, but now I went back to
| listen more carefully. I'm not sure if my headphones are
| "quality" or not but they are the most expensive set I've ever
| owned.
|
| I hear no clipping (like sudden silence) at the end of notes,
| even if I wait a long time. But, my ears are not tuned.
| neosat wrote:
| Incredible - loved it! This is what a modern digital music
| instrument should be like :)
| thriftwy wrote:
| It does produce quite nice-sounding fragments from random mouse
| moves. It highlights how much of the actual music composition
| process is just plain math, which is done by the algorithm in
| this case.
| throwaway4837 wrote:
| No matter where I move my cursor, it ends up sounding like an
| opening theme for a light-hearted anime series. Impressed at how
| melodic it sounds even though I don't know what I'm doing.
|
| Also please fix the mouse jacking. I was only able to regain
| control of my mouse after exiting the tab :(
| neosat wrote:
| Esc worked for me!
| fire wrote:
| god I clicked in and suddenly an hour went by, this is brilliant
| lioeters wrote:
| It's a modern Web Audio implementation of this Mac software from
| 1986 (last updated in 2004).
|
| Music Mouse - An Intelligent Instrument -
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220629172536fw_/http://retiary...
| (Archived because the original site is quite slow:
| http://retiary.org/ls/programs.html)
|
| It was written by Laurie Spiegel, a composer and early pioneer in
| electronic music.
|
| > Music Mouse is an algorithmic musical composition software
| developed by Laurie Spiegel. The "intelligent instrument" name
| refers to the program's built-in knowledge of chord and scale
| convention and stylistic constraints. Automating these processes
| allows the user to focus on other aspects of the music in real
| time.
|
| > In addition to improvisations using this software, Spiegel
| composed several works for "Music Mouse", including Cavis muris
| in 1986, Three Sonic Spaces in 1989, and Sound Zones in 1990. She
| continued to update the program through Macintosh OS 9 and, as of
| 2021, it remained available for purchase or demo download from
| her website.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Spiegel
|
| She was featured in the documentary, Sisters with Transistors.
| https://sisterswithtransistors.com/
| lioeters wrote:
| > To enable MIDI output, please use a Web MIDI capable web
| browser. (Chrome or Opera)
|
| It took 10 years, but Firefox finally has Web MIDI!
|
| Bugzilla: Implement the WebMIDI API -
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=836897
| dmix wrote:
| Love that website. Was this sold in stores?
| runlevel1 wrote:
| Laurie Spiegel is a Bell Labs alum. Bell Labs is the nexus for
| so many remarkable people.
|
| A bit off-topic, but does anyone know of a book that touches on
| how Bell Labs managed to recruit and foster so many great
| minds?
| pushedx wrote:
| "UNIX: A History and a Memoir" by Kernighan is a really fun
| read. Just publushed a few years ago as well.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-History-Memoir-Brian-
| Kernighan/d...
| YossarianFrPrez wrote:
| It's somewhat covered in John Gartner's "The Idea Factory: A
| History of Bell Labs"
| tabtab wrote:
| Cool! It's kind of a glorified wind chime.
| geocar wrote:
| how fun.
|
| maybe the author does not know this, but shift+/ doesn't work on
| a portuguese keyboard at least in safari; shift-7 is / and
| shift-' is ?
|
| all of the other keys work.
| tapland wrote:
| It's the same for a lot of EU keyboard layouts =(
| waltbosz wrote:
| I wonder if the key mapping was copied from the original Mac
| program.
|
| It does seem odd to require ctrl/shift to make the changes
| since it necessitates taking your hand off the mouse.
| mdmglr wrote:
| Ingenious! Can I record in the app?
|
| How are the tones generated?
| dbg31415 wrote:
| I had this software when I was a kid on my Macintosh Classic.
|
| This brought back a lot of fond memories -- just doodling with
| sound.
|
| Thanks!
| franciscop wrote:
| With the default settings and just scrolling around it really
| feels like I'm in some sort of badly played Ghibli's OST!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpfLKbjTWn0
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz68vFJmLKk
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFFy0yEYki0
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Haha, I thought the same !
| shubhamjain wrote:
| As a person with no knowledge of music theory, I am amazed how
| the music produced here, even with completely random mouse
| movements, still sounds decent--even a bit pleasing, if I may.
| Certainly better than hitting keys randomly on a piano as an
| amateur. How does that happen? Is it just about the tempo, and
| how space between two notes has been programmatically defined?
| rkachowski wrote:
| when you first open the page it will only use the white keys,
| this essentially puts everything in the key of C major and
| prevents clashing of notes.
|
| If you change the setting from "diatonic" to "chromatic" on the
| top left you'll get the random hitting of keys effect you
| mention :)
| coldtea wrote:
| How do you know it's not in A minor? :-)
| reikonomusha wrote:
| (Somewhat of a half-serious/half-joke answer:) Because it
| doesn't have any G#, of course!
| rkachowski wrote:
| plot twist: it was E Phrygian
| exitb wrote:
| It does keep the tempo, but also limits you to a single scale.
| So it does sound nice for a bit, but the song doesn't really go
| anywhere. There are some physical instruments that typically
| limit you to a single scale too, like a harmonica.
| coldtea wrote:
| You don't need modulation (going to more than one scale/key)
| for the song to "go somewhere" or be hella interesting,
| catchy and touching/emotional.
|
| Tens of thousands of the most known rock and pop songs and
| hits, from rockers to tearful ballads, are single scale
| diatonic as well.
|
| You don't even need off-scale passing notes...
|
| The reason this doesn't go anywhere, is not because it's
| single-scale, but because the melody has no direction and
| purpose. It's just a "random" pick based on the mouse
| movements.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| Music theory is an amazing subject. You can actually make
| random notes sound reasonably musical by constraining them to
| just a few simple rules. Copy/pasting from Dmitri Tymoczko's
| Music 105 lecture notes:
|
| 1. Conjunct melodic motion. Melodies tend to move by short
| distances from note to note. Large leaps sound inherently
| unmelodic.
|
| 2. Harmonic consistency. The chords in a passage of music,
| whatever they may be, tend to be structurally similar to one
| another.
|
| 3. Acoustic consonance. Some chords sound intrinsically good or
| pleasing. These are said to be consonant.
|
| 4. Scales. Over small spans of musical time (say 30 seconds or
| so), most musical styles tend to use just a few types of notes,
| between 5 to 8.
|
| 5. Centricity. Over moderate spans of musical time, one tonic
| note is heard as being more prominent than the others,
| appearing more frequently and serving as a goal of musical
| motion.
|
| (Not to say that everything that sounds musical follows these
| rules, just that if you follow these rules the output is likely
| to sound musical.)
| DefNotMe wrote:
| Implementation of something like this in Pong would be brilliant,
| where the ball is the "mouse"
| dbg31415 wrote:
| The old bouncy screensaver.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| I had low expectations for this when I clicked the link and saw
| the spinny-rotatey loading ring (which for informational sites
| usually portends a wasted journey) - but I have to say this is
| one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time! I think an
| FPGA-based implementation of this or something similar might end
| up on my projects list in the not too distant future...
| maxbendick wrote:
| Always love to see Tero Parviainen's new projects. Big
| inspiration for my webaudio tinkering.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| As the world's most Curmudgeonly and Grumpy Old Man (TM) when it
| comes to web-based music applications ... THIS IS AMAZING. If I
| wasn't busy, I'd be implementing a native version of this right
| now. I know some of Laurie Spiegel's music, but had no idea she
| had ever designed anything like this. Just amazing.
| cloogshicer wrote:
| Is the source code available somewhere?
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(page generated 2022-11-21 23:01 UTC)