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 [log in to unmask]