Author: Ying

The first design is a copy of the music box and is fitted into an interactive interface. The user can click on the metal tube and mark the notes. When the notes play, the metal bars will also move. This would be considered a playback system.

The second design is based on a real instrument called the xylophone. The user can tap on each metal bar and play the melody. This would be considered a real-time interactive system. Similarly, the third design interacts based on user movement and can play different frequencies/notes at a different position on the x and y-axis. 

This is a music piece from an album that is used for a history documentary series. I found this music very soothing and each instrument is played in a way that is blended so well together. For the visual, I used circles to represent each note. Different instruments will be represented in different colors and the size will reflect the pitch/accent of the sound. I could of add a time representation so that I know the time signatures and tempo. 

Project Link

Inspiration & Concept

Once upon a time, Google Translate is so amazing that it can do beatboxing, and make music on its own! In this project, I will be exploring the text-speech feature as a part of my research in exploring rhythm and composition. There are many videos online where people used Google Translate as a way to make/remix music and it turned out to be amusing and fun. 

Design

For the original plan, I thought of making a sequencer and timeline where I can put each sound. These sounds have the option to change pitch and volume. The idea of a sequencer and timeline was dropped because the P5.speech library doesn’t work too well with tone.js. Also, I experienced a lot of crashing due to the text-voice taking up too much memory. I had to rewrite my code several times which is annoying. The final product turned out to have generative background music with Tone’s CtrlMarkov. The idea behind the composition to have a freestyle rap battle vibe to it. For the interactions, its mostly sliders and the input boxes where you can put any texts that you want to play alongside with the generated background.

Challenges

Overall, I wasn’t really satisfied with this project because it didn’t go out well due to crashing and time constraints (wish to work on it further). The idea of integrating P5.speech to Tone.Js is harder than I expected. There are times where sliders don’t work individually and the voice is not working (defaulted).

Reflection

For the future, I should plan it out better and have a much clearer idea in mind before doing something. If I were to add anything to the current project, I would add other kinds of interactive besides the input and slider like mouseclick on certain elements. I would also add more visual effects to make it more appealing. 

Link to p5.js

For this assignment, I didn’t use my chosen music to recreate the beat because it wasn’t all that interesting and I wasn’t hearing much. While I was brainstorming what to recreate, there was a party at my Mexican neighbor next door. It was really loud so I decided to recreate the beat instead. There was a lot of drum going in the music. I split the beats into 3 segments and having them played 2 times. The tempo is fairly fast, I set it to around 120. For the time signatures, I used the compound configuration 9/8. 

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Design 1: Dandelion 

This is an interactive interface idea based on dandelion spores. In this design, you can find a timeline on the bottom where you can compose your own music. Each spore that comes out of the plant represents notes that are played. On the left bottom corner, there are different options for play and different sounds, etc.

 Design 2: 3D IMPACT

This is a 3D interactive interface idea based on cross-platform music games. Each note is represented by a 3D sphere and depending on different positions on the x-axis, it will have different sounds. When the note is played, the sphere will shattered apart. 

Design 3: Sound of Rain

This is a visual music interface based on rain. This design idea is intended to be generative music. The rain pattern is generative by an algorithm and each raindrop represents a sound. I thought it will be interesting to see what it sounds like and possibly a way to re-imagine the sound of the rain.