# Looking for a new composing program



## sammyooba

I'm looking for a composing program that let's me make music with the exact pitches that I set (very specific pitches such as (137.5x2), (137.6x2) isn't accurate enough). I am not going to be playing in any known musical scales. It'll be based on popular mathematical constants such as pi, e, i, the golden ratio, and things in nature that borrow the golden ratio such as sunflower formations and bee hives. 

Any suggestions? As of now, I only have NCH Tone Generator which just generate a chord and that's about it. I need something that is something like Sibelius or Finale.


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## Kopachris

I don't know any specific software off the top of my head, but you should look for software that supports the MIDI Tuning Standard. I do know that the Timidity++ player supports _playing_ MIDI files made with that standard, but I don't think Timidity++ can create MIDI files.


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## soundandfury

sammyooba said:


> I'm looking for a composing program that let's me make music with the exact pitches that I set (very specific pitches such as (137.5x2), (137.6x2) isn't accurate enough). I am not going to be playing in any known musical scales. It'll be based on popular mathematical constants such as pi, e, i, the golden ratio, and things in nature that borrow the golden ratio such as sunflower formations and bee hives.
> 
> Any suggestions? As of now, I only have NCH Tone Generator which just generate a chord and that's about it. I need something that is something like Sibelius or Finale.


Firstly let me say that you're not the first person to experiment with mathematical constants in this way, and I don't expect you to be successful: most mathematical constants are irrational, and several have ugly continued fractions, meaning that as harmonic ratios they will sound rather awful. If you can manage to make this work, then fair play to you, but don't be too optimistic about your chances. (The golden ratio at least has the simple continued fraction {1;1;1;1...} which means that the 1st-order intermodulation products will still be in a phinary scale)

Secondly, how comfortable are you with command-line tools? If you're happy with something where you use a text editor to create a file describing programmatically the pitches and timings required, then run that through a program that generates audio, then I could create a program of that nature fairly easily (building audio synthesis programs is one of my hobbies). Would that be of use to you?


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## sammyooba

I am fairly confident in my mathematical approach to composing. I've figured out chords pretty well with a mathematical approach that I have been working on for about a year. I have done countless experiments with NCH tone generator testing chords. However, I now run into the problem of testing chord progressions. What I plan to do if I get the program is first test some chord progressions. I don't really care about timing too much yet, except for the time signature I guess, as I won't be using melodies, but just chords as that is the main focus of my study. 

However, I have no idea what a command-line tool is.


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## kv466

In the tradition of all great things...make it yourself or find someone who can.


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## Igneous01

sammyooba said:


> I am fairly confident in my mathematical approach to composing. I've figured out chords pretty well with a mathematical approach that I have been working on for about a year. I have done countless experiments with NCH tone generator testing chords. However, I now run into the problem of testing chord progressions. What I plan to do if I get the program is first test some chord progressions. I don't really care about timing too much yet, except for the time signature I guess, as I won't be using melodies, but just chords as that is the main focus of my study.
> 
> However, I have no idea what a command-line tool is.


Command line tool would be the equivalent of programming the pitches in. But that depends on the software, whether it even has an open source code, and whether such tools were created to allow you to manipulate the program to play these pitches. You probably could pull it off if you wrote your own synthesizer, however, Im not familiar with what language is used to write synthesizers.


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## sammyooba

It seems like my reply got deleted as the site wasn't working..

The main functions I was looking for in the program was

-Play any frequency (I want to enter stuff like (1+radical5)/2) so I can play very specific frequencies. 
-Time so I can create chords
-Produce midi files so I can attach instruments to the midi file


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## soundandfury

sammyooba said:


> It seems like my reply got deleted as the site wasn't working..
> 
> The main functions I was looking for in the program was
> 
> -Play any frequency (I want to enter stuff like (1+radical5)/2) so I can play very specific frequencies.
> -Time so I can create chords
> -Produce midi files so I can attach instruments to the midi file


Yes, I saw your original reply, and I'm working on the program. Most of the parsing of the input file is done (I just have to make it parse 'fexps' - arithmetical expressions in Polish Notation).
The way fexps work is, to enter (1+radical5)/2 you use: / + 1 ~ 5 2
You basically have to work from the outside of your expression inwards:


Code:


The outermost operation is a division: [b][SIZE="4"]/[/SIZE][/b]
 The numerator is a sum: [b][SIZE="4"]+[/SIZE][/b]
  The first summand is [b]1[/b]
  The second summand is a radical (which is encoded as [b][SIZE="4"]~[/SIZE][/b])
   The argument of the radical is [b]5[/b]
 The denominator is [b]2[/b]
Thus the expression is [b][SIZE="4"]/ +[/SIZE] 1 [SIZE="4"]~[/SIZE] 5 2[/b]

When the parsing is done, I'll make it write out a wave file with sines to test it, then make it generate a midi. All that will probably take around a week.


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## sammyooba

so excited


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## soundandfury

microtone v0.1. Included is a 'spec' file explaining the format of the input, and a sample input file 'test'. To try it out, unzip it, open a command prompt, cd to the directory it's in, and run


Code:


microtone.exe -itest -otest.wav

This will produce a WAV file of the input file 'test'.


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## Billy

Euclid's Elements is one book I know of that explains the Golden Ratio. Is the composition going to be revolving around the Golden Ratio, or even Golden Section, or will also there be other elements of Geometry included. I would suggest another approach that does not have much to do with pitch but does have much to do with visualization. I do not have a visual imagination, but I use Reason Software to compose many of my works in combonation with Sibelius. One thing you might try if you like is to cut the blocks on a track up to make Golden Polygons and Divisions. Then use them as the usual blocks for experimenting with the music. 

Not all music is produced on a string, some can be made other ways. If the pitch is made on the vibrations from shortening or lengthening a string, then it can be a number, frequency, key (or approximation) and with that unit translated over many different ways you can make ratios and IMAGINE forms like those in Geometry. Color can also have Golden Polygonosity, and so can light but when I think of Optics and Visual illusions, I think that it is possible for any number, or form to mean another. This is a kind of Gematria of the Kabbalists I am thinking of.


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## soundandfury

Billy said:


> This is a kind of Gematria of the Kabbalists I am thinking of.


Gematria and kabbalah will lead you nowhere worth going. Musical experimentation outside the 12-tone Western scale will only work if grounded in psychoacoustics, and the brain's perception of ratios in sound is very different to its perception of ratios in visual stimuli. Attempts to use analogy between the two are unlikely to succeed.

I would suggest concentrating on the continued fractions of your ratios, since it is these that control the difference frequencies. In particular, for a ratio 1:r, the key difference is (r-floor(r)):1 and this can be iterated to give a sequence of difference frequencies. The (justly intoned) Western scale is designed such that these sequences terminate quickly. The Golden Ratio phi has the property that 1hi = (phi-1):1 which means that all the difference frequencies are powers of phi.

Harmony, fundamentally, is all about intermodulation products.


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## Billy

Well, perhaps one must know more Hebrew to practice with Gematria, though the historical Kabbalah is open to anyone who breathes. Since, in Hebrew the letters are also numbers, to learn more may help to provide a fascinating way of looking at music; and combined with the wisdom of Kabbalistic thinking, which is "tradition" as well as "reception". I am not thinking about scale.

Harmony has much more to do about flow than about accuracy. I am not a music critic though.


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## sammyooba

There's a lot of ways to approach the golden ratio in music. I won't give my ideas out but I can share these ideas since I've already abandoned these ideas.

The first idea is that everything in this world is constituted of 1:1 ratios and 1.618:1 ratios. They are like the 1 and 0s of the matrix we live in.

http://www.schillerinstitute.org/gr...sci_tuning/42pct/f3_golden_section_octave.jpg

The minor chord is constituted of the golden ratio.

while...

The major chord is constituted of a 1:1 ratio. ex: 440 - 550 - 660. Subtract the intervals and they are 110 Hz:110 Hz
(in other words, in harmonics [I've also never heard something that sounds 'minor-ish' in the harmonic sequence])

Something interesting to note is that the golden rectangle can be viewed as being composed of an infinite number of squares or an infinite number of golden ratios. The square, 1:1, is the major sound we hear in music. The rectangles, 1.618:1, is the minor sound we hear in music.

Looking at the human body vertically, we find ourselves littered with golden ratios (look at your hands vertically and you'll see the fibonacci sequence between segments of our joints)

While looking at the human body horizontally, we find 1:1 ratios which is why we are symmetrical horizontally.

---

Other ideas was by a math proffessor

http://www.constructingtheuniverse.com/amen8.jpg

He found that the amen drum beat was constituted of golden ratios. Turning the amen beat sideways, he finds segments that separate notable parts of the human body.


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## sammyooba

A third idea I've thrown away is relating color to music. (Though I say I've thrown it away, it doesn't mean it doesn't work. Simply put, there are more elegant theories out there in the universe. This just explains one small part of a more elegant theory)

The idea is that the Binaural beats in music is Saturation and the Golden Ratio in Music intervals are the Hues. The shades are simply determined by how these two cross-section. At low pitch such as 50 hz, 75 Hz, which is a major fifth, is also 25 binaural beats, and this ratio gives us a dark shade.

Harmonics is the white/black (depends) of shades (binaural beats), and the Golden ratio is the white/black of colors (music intervals). I won't say more than this since it will hint too much to a very elegant theory I wish to keep to myself
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A fourth idea is combining music theory, color theory, and the Doppler Effect with Relativity, which unifies the color and sound.

As we know, a car coming by will have a shift in the pitch of the sound it is emitting. The closer it drives by us, pitch rises. The farther, pitch drops. This is just an illusion due to relativity. 

Also, take for instance, in Astronomy, moving in a certain direction is called red shift. Moving in that opposite direction is blue shift (more like teal shift). Using color theory, we know complementary colors cancel each other out. THis makes sense since opposite directions in space/time cancel out.

Using relativity, we take the idea of a vacuum in space with two space ships. Imagine you are on one of the ships, and you notice that you are moving away from the other ship by 5 m/s. However, is it the other ship that is moving away and your ship is not mobile, or is it that your ship is moving 5 m/s away while the other ship is not moving? Or is it a grey tone in between such as both are moving 2.5 m/s away from each other? This idea is important since in color theory, we know there are two effects when we combine complementary colors. If complementary colors are set in the same space/time, the colors cancel out. However, juxtapose the colors, and the two colors seem more bright. Complementary colors are movements/energy moving away from each other. If they cross paths, they cancel each other out. However, if they don't meet, and they are traveling at the same speed, then we will see an illusion that the speed doubles (either for our ship, or for their ship).

If we conclude that 137.5 degrees on a spiral (not circle) of the musical intervals is a fifth, and complementary colors, then we can see why the golden ratio is important.


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## sammyooba

As for my actual methods that I will use, I will be using three ideas:
-Fractals
-Golden Ratios
-Shape Theory


Fractal, as in, music intervals are, especially ones defined in the harmonic sequence, are simply golden ratio fractals.

And for shape theory, it attempts to define what shapes actually are. "I define it as a written formula in space/time that directs the flow of energy/tension." Take for example, when we point a finger, it shoots our tension out of the tip of our finger which attracts our eyes towards the energy flowing from it (all an illusion); hence, why we tend to look at the direction people point their fingers at. This shows that short intervals (dissonance) creates tension.

The flow of energy is defined in the formulas of shapes in a 3D cartesian coordinate and the flow of energy/tension must have harmony in such a way that they work in accordance to the golden ratio.

I won't get too much into it, but you get the idea.

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SoundandFury, thank you for writing the program. I don't have time to try it out yet since it is finals week. I'll try it out as soon as winter break starts


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