
JazzKeys: Type to improvise Jazz music - UniIsland
https://jazzkeys.plan8.co/
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zakk
Reminds me of Mikutap: [https://aidn.jp/mikutap/](https://aidn.jp/mikutap/)

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modeless
Also [https://touchpianist.com/](https://touchpianist.com/)

Edit: Oh, and this one looks silly but generates surprisingly nice chord
progressions that actually resolve sometimes:
[https://www.adultswim.com/etcetera/choir/](https://www.adultswim.com/etcetera/choir/)

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pieq
The choir is absolutely amazing! Thanks for sharing!

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ralmeida
Nice touch that deleting letters descends chromatically. Letters typed appear
unrelated to notes generated, you can type the same letter and it will keep
generating different notes.

Also, it seems it will never resolve to the root, no matter what you type :(

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luckydata
Never give any satisfaction to the listener, no matter what, pretty much the
most important rule of high brow jazz.

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forgetcolor
This is mostly just using the keyboard to manipulate the rhythm/time
performance of a pre-configured score. Interesting, but not what most would
think of as jazz improvisation.

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hammock
Not exactly. It is far more random than that. As far as I can tell, it plays
random notes from a pre-loaded scale - occasionally chords, and punctuation
marks play chords. Backspace plays a descending scale.

The aesthetics of it, including typography and sounds are very nice.

And typing () leads to a special easter egg :)

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oplav
That's the case in "Free Form" mode.

If you click the eight note with a plus next you get pre-configured scores
that you can just manipulate the rhythm on.

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hammock
Wow I did not see the controls over there at all

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UniIsland
It appears nobody noticed the "share" feature, which records your typing
sequence and replays it. I think it's amazing to use this feature to write
letters. Try reading this poem to see what I mean.

[https://jazzkeys.plan8.co/?msg=-MBSxW78xad7GiKhvr6j](https://jazzkeys.plan8.co/?msg=-MBSxW78xad7GiKhvr6j)

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emsign
[https://jazzkeys.plan8.co/?msg=-MBeGU8Te_CQdizj2E9v](https://jazzkeys.plan8.co/?msg=-MBeGU8Te_CQdizj2E9v)

I improvised this as I was typing. The "Peace Piece" song was the inspiration
for what I wrote. It's a really fun way of creative writing. The text isn't
very good, but it feels like writing is like a performance.

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smrk007
I want this as a VSCode or Vim extension!

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jwalton
Maybe something discordant when you type in a variable name that isn't
defined? :D

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djohnston
wow if writing clean code improv'd a jazz piece i could definitely go back to
coding 12 hours a day

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joan_kode
This is really well done. I find the default "free form" mode is by far the
most interesting, and it's more complex than a lot of the comments are
implying here. It cycles between different patterns, and the pattern is
changed by inserting a space or punctuation. You can easily verify this by
typing an extremely long word without spaces: the pattern becomes apparent,
even though it's always transposed up or down by 5 semitones when it repeats.
This interval is well chosen - it effectively explores all possible
transpositions of the pattern, while keeping the transitions harmonious. This
also means that the tonality is constantly wandering, there is no overall key
but only transient tonalities.

Different punctuation marks provide different collections of more-or-less
conclusive chords. This might be the only place where tonality is hinted at,
especially if you bash the comma, you can hear it's rooted in one key for the
whole session. As far as I can tell those special characters are / ! ? 1 . ,

I haven't figured out if the patterns are generated on-the-fly or chosen from
a predefined set, but they tend to have a nice melodic quality.

Someone also mentioned special words rain and wind, but there are more... very
fun to explore. The concept is nice but the execution is especially
interesting.

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UniIsland
Agreed. Great concept and execution.

The "share" feature shows that it also implemented a format to serialize the
typing sequence and stores it on server.

If I still write letters to friends, I'd definitely start using this from now
on.

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kanobo
Sounds nice, I like the minimalist look. But I think it would be a giant leap
if the music was somehow related to what is being typed. Also it took a while
to load, it could use a loading progress indicator — I thought it was broken
and was opening it in different browsers thinking Safari wasn't supported.

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elomarns
I don't know anything about jazz or how to create any kind of music, but it's
so relaxing to type while listening to these notes. I would love this as an
application integrated with the OS, so I can listen it with every keystroke.

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starlineventure
Try typing in "rain" or "wind"

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fudged71
"Ocean" also works

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exabrial
Also, can't figure out how to play the lick

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recursive
There doesn't seem to be a way to affect the pitch, so figuring out how to
play anything in particular is going to be tough.

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exabrial
Dammit, just play the right notes

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bananamerica
I want that as an Emacs minor mode!

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dasyatidprime
Interesting concept. Audio's crackly at times on my Linux Firefox. Though I
keep waiting for something like this to show up that's more grounded in music
theory…

Aww, I can't type outside ASCII range? Drat, I wanted to see whether different
languages (even in Latin script) were distinguishable by sound this way.

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christiansakai
I press the same letter on a keyboard and it just makes some jazz licks. How
do I intend to play this?

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exabrial
ARGH How do I resolve to major????

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ipiz0618
Genius!! From what I can tell it seems to be random keys? Would be nice if a
certain progression can be specified, but this is already awesome. Saving this
as my new note taking tool.

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corytheboyd
I have a feature request BESIDES make it less random! When you delete all text
with select all and then backspace/del it should make a huge loud combination
of noises!

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RBerenguel
I need this as an emacs mode. Would make coding feel different

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grimmdude
Ha very cool! I like that punctuation marks add some flair.

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jimwhite
This is great. Would love to be able to enable this on my keyboard for typing
everything as a bit of an upgrade over my super clicky mechanical keyboard.

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diimdeep
In network inspector you can find midi files that can be downloaded and played
for example in VLC.

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zoytek
Love it.. I reckon I could write an EP for listening to on the way to work!

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afandian
There's an eathter egg!

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jimhefferon
No Android, unfortunately.

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toohotatopic
Why does it not work?

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jimhefferon
I got a message saying it won't work under Android.

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cocktailpeanuts
This wins the day. How do I jam multiple instruments?

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modeless
Would be cool to do sentiment analysis on the typed text to switch between
major/minor or other characteristics.

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lysp
Try:

....

Also try smileys:

:) and :(

(for major minor)

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jeremiecoullon
this is great. The Kohl concert is hard to type at the right pace though :)

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mortenjorck
I thought I would be familiar enough with Blue in Green to get the tempo
right, but my memory was no match for Bill Evans' improvisational style!

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Trufa
Vague related shameless plug, if anyone wants to give me feedback on this:
[https://practicemusic.net/](https://practicemusic.net/) I'd gladly take it!

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cmrdsprklpny
This might be intentional on your part, but it seems to mark enharmonic
equivalents as incorrect (a 5th from Gb is Db, which is the same as C# but C#
is marked as incorrect).

