
Show HN: Muzoti – Algorithmic Music with Web Audio/Midi and VueJS - jeremyleach
https://www.muzoti.com/
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lolc
While I find this sort of demo very impressive I must confess to find little
art in it and I'd compare the experience to reading a long sentence which is
very tiring with no excitement or tension and one's wondering if there's ever
going to be a point to it or whether it's just going to fizzle out and one's
left with the unsatisfactory feeling of having experienced nothing.

~~~
qop
That's such an interesting thought. I've played some procedurally generated
dungeon games in my time and I've always thought it was interesting to have a
new experience but there was always that nagging feeling of aimlessness.

So in order for a machine to be able to craft an interesting narrative for a
human, I think it would need to take into consideration the temporal element
of how humans consume things and how that impacts the experience.

In a dungeon, that's when you go down ten different dead ends and you are
losing interest.

In music that's probably a long drawn-out melody that ends abruptly, like what
you're talking about.

How would something beyond that be modelled in a program, though?

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brudgers
Very nice. Curious about the licensing for the compositions because I could
not find information. Seems like a critical component of a music composition
web application from the user's perspective for many uses beyond just
listening...and even for some 'just listening' contexts.

~~~
jeremyleach
Thank you and yes, good question. The generated compositions are completely
royalty free and can be used commercially - they do not require any
attribution (though attribution always appreciated). I should add it to the
website.

~~~
brudgers
That sounds like a reasonable approach. I suggest making it explicit with a
standard license such as CC0. [https://creativecommons.org/share-your-
work/public-domain/cc...](https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-
domain/cc0/)

~~~
FigBug
Since the output of an algorithm can't be copyrighted, does it make an sense
to apply a license to it? You can't waive rights that you don't have.

> 503.03(a) Works-not originated by a human author.

> In order to be entitled to copyright registration, a work must be the
> product of human authorship. Works produced by mechanical processes or
> random selection without any contribution by a human author are not
> registrable.

~~~
brudgers

      without *any* contribution
    

I'm not a lawyer. If I were, that phrase would give me a toehold or restless
sleep depending on which side of the pile of money I was on...ok, actually if
I was on the "hands on the money side", I would just advise avoiding the risk
because that's what lawyers are expected to do. Or to put it another way, the
argument that works created by the program are not copyrightable might tend to
be more expensive than simply paying licensing fees in a business context.

But again, I'm not a lawyer.

~~~
FigBug
If there is a contribution from a human, then it would be from the user who
entered some parameters and ran the program, not the author of program.
Therefore the copyright would belong to the user, which is fine.

The only way the copyright could belong to the author of the program, is if
the program contained copyrighted material that it copied directly into the
output.

For example, if the program contained 1000 prewritten melodies, and randomly
selected one and copied it into the output.

~~~
brudgers
I'm not sure there is case law to support that argument. I am not sure that
there isn't case law to support it either. Even if there is case law to
support it, the circumstances in which the case law is helpful are somewhat
likely to be more expensive than licensing other music more explicitly
providing more conventional copyright permissions. For example, assuming the
premise that the copyright belongs to the user in a case where two different
users enter the same (or even similar) parameters then one of their
compositions is probably copyright infringing on the other author -- or both
are on a third even earlier author who entered the same or similar parameters.

Again I am not a lawyer though it doesn't prevent me from thinking along the
lines I have observed laywers thinking.

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ripdog
Wow, this is great!

Not sure why you ask for Chrome, however, as your site works perfectly in
Firefox too. Let's not go back to the days of "Made for Internet Explorer 6",
eh?

~~~
jeremyleach
Thank you! You're right, though there are a few issues with the extra controls
in FF right now, difficult to drag the volume sliders - only text input works.

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amitp
Cool!

When I read Hawkins's book _On Intelligence_ back in the mid-2000s I had
thought it'd be cool to generate music by having the system predict what was
novel and what was familiar. By mixing some novel and familiar
notes/rhythm/tempo/timbre/percussion into the stream I should be able to make
new music from scratch. I was annoyed that so many systems trained blindly on
existing music instead of using first principles to generate something
(although existing music seems useful for seeding the novelty/familiarity
parameters). For games especially it would be nice to turn up or down
different types of novelty to match what the player is doing.

However, as often happens, I got distracted before I got there. I learned Pure
Data, and then got into audio synthesis, and then got into signal processing,
and that led to procedural map generation … :)

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otterpro
I'm amazed how well the music sounds, especially with instruments like
glockenspiel and pad.

Is there a license for the generated music? It would be nice to include it in
Youtube videos, for example.

Jukedeck is another music generator
([https://www.jukedeck.com/](https://www.jukedeck.com/)), but they limit to 5
songs per month for free accounts, I think.

~~~
jeremyleach
Thank you! The generated music is royalty free. I will make that explicit on
website.

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SubiculumCode
[http://www.muzoti.com/preview/?seed=obakisrijb&inst=2,16,21,...](http://www.muzoti.com/preview/?seed=obakisrijb&inst=2,16,21,9&key=-5&tempo=67&name=trancendent)
moods

I was impressed by this tune 20 seconds in...although I find the chord
transitions pedestrian

~~~
jeremyleach
Nice, this is one of my own personal favourites:
[https://www.muzoti.com/preview/?seed=kbzjijjsth&inst=2,16,21...](https://www.muzoti.com/preview/?seed=kbzjijjsth&inst=2,16,21,9&key=-8&tempo=66&name=deep_surprise)

~~~
SubiculumCode
That is nice.

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theknarf
At some point I forgot that I was listening to generated music and it just
kept going in the background. Well done.

~~~
jeremyleach
Thanks. I do the same - good to know i'm not the only one!

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FigBug
Do you plan to make an API available in future or make it a library? I work on
a DAW, and it would be a nice feature to auto generate a song for the user
when they start, rather than just giving them a fixed demo song. Any plans to
support other genres? Please email me at roland@tracktion.com

~~~
jeremyleach
Let's talk. I'll send you an email. Thanks.

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elihu
That sounds really good. Do the algorithms generalize to other tunings, like
for instance seven-limit just intonation?

(For an example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG69xptl1Bc&t=260s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG69xptl1Bc&t=260s))

~~~
jeremyleach
Thank you! The algorithms are universal and not tied to any particular
modality (rhythm/melody/harmony) or particular tuning though they can exploit
certain given relationships eg consonance if the algorithm is given knowledge
of them. Exploring other tunings and making them available in the UI is
definitely on the list. The core algorithm works by creating
repetition/variation at multiple levels over time which is modality agnostic.

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juanuys
Thanks for this. I'm very much looking forward to an algorithmic music API/SDK
for gaming, to suit mood, etc.

PS "less controls" => "fewer controls" or "hide controls"?

~~~
jeremyleach
You're welcome! Yes, 'fewer controls' is probably better. Re: API/SDK, which
would be more suitable for you, API or SDK? What platform do you use,
unity/unreal etc., or are you talking about a web game? And would you want
rendered audio or note data, such as MIDI from the API/SDK? And if SDK, what
language, or maybe it's not important? Good to get ideas so I can plan the
most useful delivery mechanism for the most people.

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jvozza
It would be nice if you could provide the ability to create an account and
save songs to it. This way you could go back and edit your compositions later,
would probably increase repeat traffic.

~~~
jeremyleach
Yes that's the plan for the next release. The site currently is just a
demonstration of the tech. To be more useful as you rightly suggest it needs
to be more of a tool where people can create songs or fragments and edit and
save etc.

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oori
rival for elevator music. Eno beware.

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stevehiehn
This is very impressive. Have you experimented with tone.js? Or straight just
straight up webaudioapi with samples?

~~~
jeremyleach
Its straight up webaudioapi making use of the fluid soundfont - see credits at
bottom of website. I have not used tone.js though I have come across it.

~~~
stevehiehn
Very cool

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lisk1
Nice and easy tool to compose royalty free music this is valuable nowadays.
Thank you for providing it.

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mnx
Nice, but it crackles very hard on my machine, both on FF and chrome.

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TheOtherHobbes
Works on an iPad, with occasional crackles.

