Technological and Computer-based Projects



Musical typing
Version 1.0 complete
Using: Max/MSP

     An algorithmic conversion of text to pitch. Letters that already share their name with a note are assigned to that note. (A-G, with B as B-flat and H as B-natural, in the German style.) The user can type and hear notes in real time, or import any text file to be read by the Max/MSP patch.

A complex randomizer sub-patch controls speed, number of octaves in range, and octave offset in a manner designed to emulate not "true" randomness, but the kind of "randomness" we experience in nature— certain parameters affect others; the fact that you've rolled twelve 1's in a row does actually mean that something is probably going to change soon; etc.

Capital letters are played at a higher velocity, the first note after a space is elongated (but not rhythmically altered, so it hangs over the rest of the word and serves to tie it together aurally) and a typed quotation mark will switch the MIDI voice from piano to a random other patch; a second typed quotation mark will switch back to piano. Thus, all spoken text is in a different 'voice' with simple prose being recited by the piano.



In future iterations of the piece, I'd like to add parsing per-word, to have the additional option of each word taking the same amount of time, regardless of how many notes/letters it has. Longer words would then become fast tuplets, and words like 'I' and 'an' would be longer, more drawn-out, almost as breaths in the music.

My hope is that in a future form, this patch can be used as part of an art installation, for example with 'Ulysses' or 'Leviticus' in one channel, and random pitches in another. Or, perhaps, users could send text messages to a given number, and their texts would be incorporated in real time into the piece.