It does produce quite nice-sounding fragments from random mouse moves. It highlights how much of the actual music composition process is just plain math, which is done by the algorithm in this case.
Music Mouse
11–20 of 58 posts
Re: Music Mouse
#12As a person with no knowledge of music theory, I am amazed how the music produced here, even with completely random mouse movements, still sounds decent—even a bit pleasing, if I may. Certainly better than hitting keys randomly on a piano as an amateur. How does that happen? Is it just about the tempo, and how space between two notes has been programmatically defined?
Re: Music Mouse
#13As a person with no knowledge of music theory, I am amazed how the music produced here, even with completely random mouse movements, still sounds decent—even a bit pleasing, if I may. Certainly better than hitting keys randomly on a piano as an amateur. How does that happen? Is it just about the tempo, and how space between two notes has been programmatically defined?
It does keep the tempo, but also limits you to a single scale. So it does sound nice for a bit, but the song doesn't really go anywhere. There are some physical instruments that typically limit you to a single scale too, like a harmonica.
Re: Music Mouse
#14Nice! One problem: There's digital clipping. I suspect that the four samples are normalized individually, and when playing at the same time the transients add up to over 0dB. On quality headphones (beyerdynamic dt770 for me) it is quite audible. It happens with the piano and the synth sample, but is more audible with the piano sample.
Re: Music Mouse
#15As a person with no knowledge of music theory, I am amazed how the music produced here, even with completely random mouse movements, still sounds decent—even a bit pleasing, if I may. Certainly better than hitting keys randomly on a piano as an amateur. How does that happen? Is it just about the tempo, and how space between two notes has been programmatically defined?
when you first open the page it will only use the white keys, this essentially puts everything in the key of C major and prevents clashing of notes.
If you change the setting from "diatonic" to "chromatic" on the top left you'll get the random hitting of keys effect you mention :)
Re: Music Mouse
#16As a person with no knowledge of music theory, I am amazed how the music produced here, even with completely random mouse movements, still sounds decent—even a bit pleasing, if I may. Certainly better than hitting keys randomly on a piano as an amateur. How does that happen? Is it just about the tempo, and how space between two notes has been programmatically defined?
when you first open the page it will only use the white keys, this essentially puts everything in the key of C major and prevents clashing of notes. If you change the setting from "diatonic" to "chromatic" on the top left you'll get the random hitting of keys effect you mention :)
How do you know it's not in A minor? :-)
Re: Music Mouse
#17As a person with no knowledge of music theory, I am amazed how the music produced here, even with completely random mouse movements, still sounds decent—even a bit pleasing, if I may. Certainly better than hitting keys randomly on a piano as an amateur. How does that happen? Is it just about the tempo, and how space between two notes has been programmatically defined?
It does keep the tempo, but also limits you to a single scale. So it does sound nice for a bit, but the song doesn't really go anywhere. There are some physical instruments that typically limit you to a single scale too, like a harmonica.
You don't need modulation (going to more than one scale/key) for the song to "go somewhere" or be hella interesting, catchy and touching/emotional.
Tens of thousands of the most known rock and pop songs and hits, from rockers to tearful ballads, are single scale diatonic as well.
You don't even need off-scale passing notes...
The reason this doesn't go anywhere, is not because it's single-scale, but because the melody has no direction and purpose. It's just a "random" pick based on the mouse movements.
Re: Music Mouse
#18Nice! One problem: There's digital clipping. I suspect that the four samples are normalized individually, and when playing at the same time the transients add up to over 0dB. On quality headphones (beyerdynamic dt770 for me) it is quite audible. It happens with the piano and the synth sample, but is more audible with the piano sample.
Additive digital clipping would be happening in your device. You should be able to resolve it by turning your OS volume down. This website could use a volume slider for each voice, though.
Re: Music Mouse
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
when you first open the page it will only use the white keys, this essentially puts everything in the key of C major and prevents clashing of notes. If you change the setting from "diatonic" to "chromatic" on the top left you'll get the random hitting of keys effect you mention :)
How do you know it's not in A minor? :-)
(Somewhat of a half-serious/half-joke answer:) Because it doesn't have any G#, of course!
Re: Music Mouse
#20With your hand on the mouse, move it up and down a couple millimetres quickly, like you're scratching an itch. This makes quite a nice song.