thought some of you music-structure-lovers would get a kick out of:

binary.mp3 - "8-bit" progression from 0-255 (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... 255), where each bit = one note from a C lydian scale (C major with an F# instead of F):

- (0 = silencio) / C (1 = 1) / D (2 = 01) / C+D (3 = 11) / E (4 = 001) / C+E (5 = 101) / D+E (6 = 011) / C+D+E (7 = 111) / F# (8 = 0001) / ... / C+D+E+F#+G+A+B+C (255 = 11111111)

binary_held.mp3 - same, but key notes are accented+sustained

enjoy! :-)

thats fairly cool

Wow ! ingenious. That's a cool idea. I like that

Cheers

Very interesting! I think the first version sounds more appealing, because the pattern of 1's and 0's makes its own pulsing volume levels which naturally fit into 4's, 8's, 16's etc. It seems to be purer than the second version.

Have you tried any other sequences that cycle through all the numbers? 'Gray encoding' comes to mind, where exactly one bit changes with each step?

Cool experiment - thanks for sharing!

very cool. it sounds like something just waiting to be inserted into a remix.

be that as it may; kudos on the 'algorythm'.

Man, you really ARE experimental.

i hate how much math and music can overlap because i love music but i'm dyscalculic.

thanks all'round for the listens. :-)

i'm very fond of numbers and mathematical structures/sequences and wanted to see what it sounded like to translate a binary sequence into sound.

there are, of course, lots of different ways to "perform" this translation. here's a variant of the same binary 0-255 sequence with a few changes:

- the pitches are different (a stack of alternating major/minor thirds)
- the tempo is a bit faster
- only one note plays at a time (with a few rules for how this note is chosen)

binary_melody.mp3

listen for the repeating patterns that arise (from the rules of the translation), last a short while, then either disappear or morph. :-)

thanks for the idea, krytonaut. :-) please elaborate: what sequences? is there a list somewhere of cool binary/bit progressions?

have you actually been finuring out how to work it, or have you got some softwear or a script or something to sort it out?

i've been doing it by hand. it takes a long time, but it makes me feel like i've earned the results. :-)

I don't know of a list of interesting sequences as such, but Gray coding is defined here: http://www.diycalculator.com/docs/puzzle-gray-code.pdf

To get the Nth Gray code, simply calculate the Exclusive OR of N and (N>>1) (where N>>1 is N shifted right one bit, ignoring the bit that 'falls off the end', and shifting 0 in at the top)

I too would like to know how you are actually generating the MIDI sequences - do you have some kind of scriptable MIDI generator or something?

I bet it does! Definately an interesting result.

Very pleasant and satisfying pieces. The simplicity of the concept makes the tunes produced the more endearing to these ears. I would think that a video based on the bitmaps produced might make a satisfying, if underwhelming multimedia experience.

As an aside, the brevity of these pieces serves to accentuate the self-indulgence inherent in those 150-second punk epics of the seventies

would make a nice blurb for my (nonexistent) pr kit: "... satisfying, if underwhelming."


yeah, anything over 60 seconds is afaic, overkill.

This is a great idea. I particularly like the binary_melody example.

In some ways this reminds me of a simple random MIDI melody generator that my brother wrote in Java a few years back. I think I still have that source code lying around here somewhere, and I might have to co-opt it to experiment with some similar ideas.