Dave Wolf writes:

>BTW, does your software incorporate the ideas represented by the above
>emotional symbols? (I like this idea.) ...
>
>But again I ask, how does your software help the novice address these
>issues?

I am searching desparately for a way to analyses a machine generated theme
to look for emotional content.  I had hoped the list could provide some
insight into this.  Since the computer is both deaf and blind, this has to
be done algorithmically.  The theme generator, which starts with a harmonic
progression (user's choice) to place a melody on, considers where the
harmony is going and what melody note would make the chord change more
effective, creating an emotion.  Setting up and resolving a sus 4th, a
large skip to the tonic note in a cadence, employing a step to the 7th
degree with a 7th chord, and other tricks that increase the probability
that the theme at least has some interest.  When fragments are extracted
for development and played in diminished tonalities or under or over
chromatic runs, excitement in the resulting emotion.  The software is not
trying to compete with or even be a great composer, just let people
expirment with CM, perhaps using their own themes and progressions.
In automatic mode, it depends a lot on the user being able to recognize
a good theme when the software presents one for their consideration.

But in the" infinite number of monkeys typing" sense, it has the ability
to create great music, if the right set of random numbers comes along (or
if the user invests the time).  As Dirty Harry (Clint Eastwood) asked "the
question is do you feel lucky?".  Therefore, the software allows for much
redoing of parts - deleting one theme, that didn't work, adding a new one,
reorchestrating, changing the form, trying another arrangement of exitsing
themes.  Even the real composers of CM did that.  Sometimes, something that
doesn't work as a symphony movement is a great piano rhapsody..  Remember
Mozart's dice? Of course, they had Mozart:-) This technology, my software
and others, is here to stay and might induce a lot of young people to study
music.  Its the way kids become architects and engineers from playing with
erector sets and logo blocks.  But in a larger sense, we learn from the bad
as well as the good - the bad teaches us what not to do.  On hearing a poor
composition from the software one might ask "Why is there no emotion in
this piece.  What's missing?" and in so doing, realize something about
emotion sources in music.

This kind of technology (not my product) has another potential as well.
Since all CM will eventually be in midi format (numerical digits, not
digitzed sound, it will be possible to anaylze the works of the great
composers and gain insight to their style and voice, especially across
many of their compositions and across composers.  Computers are extremly
good at finding subtle, obscure patterns that may have been subconscious
to the composer and overlooked by human analysis.  The goal would be to
identify all possible emotions and find generic music rules that evoke
them.  That would give future composers a great base to build from (the way
art students are taught the rules of perspective, the color wheel, etc.)

Bill Pirkle
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