(2013-10-27) Music Capture For Amateurs

Brain Fart Of The Day - I think there's an opportunity for an app that helps "compose" a tune for an amateur - someone who probably plays an instrument, can read music, has some snatches stuck in hir head, but no way to get it down.

Saves each little snatch as an infinite palette - auto-names (non-uniquely), let's you flag or rename.

"Compose" snatches - hmm reminds me of MacroMedia Director animation creation...

Rhythm:

• tap out on computer Keyboard
• app guesses number of measures based on overall duration
• app looks at cluster of inter-tap times to guess time signature
• has easy Drum Machine-like way to correct, as it loops playing
• starts out sounds as clicks, makes it easy to move all/some to separate voice (snare, cymbal, etc.)

Melody

• whistle over the rhythm loop
• pitch recognition and correction-guessing; guess at key signature
• pick default voice to start with (piano, whistle sample), easy to re-assign
• or maybe involve pentatonic model (Carl Orff)?

Chord progression - loop through various choices, grab one you like - how do this if you only have couple bars of melody? Lay that over the rhythm for first bars, then drop out the melody letting the rhythm continue?

• maybe pick chord rhythm based on initially captured rhythm - quiet piano chords? bass riff?

Then whistle again to extend initial snatch to next bars, continue?

How much of this does Garage Band or another Electronic Music app already do?

Next step - feed this into Generative Music engine? Your personal Markov Chain soundtrack?