Hey Dave,
If anyone has any pointers to where to look for ways to analyse simple
> discrete sequences of notes it would be helpful for my fitness
> functions!
>
>
I think your strategy of seeing at what number of steps the pattern is
similar to itself is quite good. I think it could be extended by saying that
notes that are a octave apart are also "almost the same" while notes -for
example- 7 semitones apart might be "a little the same". A similar analysis
could be applied to timing/rests.
Furthermore phrases that are (mostly) within one scale (this will require a
little library of scales) could also be seen as more fit.
>From there I would say that you would be well on track to filtering out
phrases that sound "musical" to us, but not yet that sound like "good
music". For "good music" I think you need a mixture of "expected" and
"unexpected" events. Expected might be straight repetition in the timing and
each note being at one of a small set of intervals from the last. I think
that if you keep "breeding" your phrases with just the above rules and
others like it you might be breeding towards more "bland" sounding phrases
if you don't also include some encouragement towards "the unexpected". Now
that I think of it a balance like that could be more appealing final results
than just favouring lots of different notes. That last option might
discourage riffs that include a lot of repetition of a single note, even
though those could be musically nice.
That's what I can come up with now, there are probably texts on the subject
that are more well researched than me thinking out loud over post-dinner
coffee :-)
Yours,
Kas.
Received on Mon Oct 10 2011 - 18:20:51 BST