e-Composer Commission

The e-Composer produces a piece of music in C major using in-built rules, your input and its own random genius. It is flexible and random enough to produce a new work every time, as long as your input allows it to.

Choose how long your piece should be, input some other values and see what the e-Composer produces!

By following the tips at the bottom, you will get the most "musical" results. If you ignore them, you will get a phrase that still follows harmonic and contrapuntal rules, but it may look and sound bizarre.

The e-Composer won't expect you to pay for your commission, but wants acknowledgment if its pieces are performed in public (before you've been booed off stage).

If you don't know what to do, just click "Commission a work" to use the suggested values.

Basic values

These set the length of the composition in bars, the number of crotchets (quarter-notes) in each bar, and how often the e-Composer changes the harmony and melody.

If you would like a compound time signature, you have to set the correct number of crotchets and change the harmonic rhythm (see tips).

Value	Explanation
Length of work	How many bars?
Time signature	How many crotchet beats per bar?
Harmonic rhythm	How often should the harmony change? This cannot be longer than the time signature. (Crotchets).
Melodic rhythm	How often should the basic melody change? This cannot be longer than the harmonic rhythm. (Crotchets).

Structure

These values affect the only structural means that the e-Composer has learnt: how often cadences appear.

Value	Explanation
Imperfect cadence period	How often should an imperfect cadence appear? (Input in bars).
Perfect cadence period	How often should a perfect cadence appear? This takes precedence over imperfect cadences. (Input in bars).

Elaboration

In some cases, the e-Composer can decide to elaborate the melody by deviating from the melodic rhythm. These values set the probability that it will do that.

Value	Explanation
Passing notes (1-100%)	Suitable notes can be divided into two equal shorter notes to form an appoggiatura (an accented dissonant note that resolves onto a consonant note). This sets the chance that each suitable note will be divided.
Longer notes (1-100%)	Some notes can be made longer than the value set for melodic rhythm. This sets the chance that that will happen for each beat.

Email options

To send your commissioned piece as an email to someone, enter the recipient's email address and your name below. Leave the boxes blank if you just want the e-Composer to produce a piece without emailing it.

Email address (optional):

Your name (optional):

In addition, you can email the piece as a MusicXML attachment, a format that you can open, edit or type-set in other notation software.

Tick box for xml email attachment:

Tips

Some tips for manipulating the e-Composer:

Between 6 and 16 bars in length is optimum, because the electronic composer then has enough choice, but its limitations aren't too obvious.
Perfect cadences (chord V - I) take precedence over imperfect cadences (V), so the values should be different. Conventionally, imperfect cadences alternate with perfect cadences to puncutate the musical phrase.
Melodic rhythm should be about double the harmonic rhythm: the melody changes roughly twice as quickly as the harmony.
Harmonic rhythm should be about double the time signature: the harmony changes twice in each bar.
To get uneven rhythms, set the harmonic rhythm to more than half of the time signature (e.g. time signature of 4, harmonic rhythm of 3).
- For a waltz rhythm, use a time signature of 3 and harmonic rhythm of 2.
- A gigue-like rhythm needs a compound time signature (3 or 6), harmonic rhythm of exactly half (1 1/2 or 3) and a melodic rhythm two-thirds of the harmonic rhythm (1 or 2).

About the e-Composer

The e-Composer produces a score that satisfies most (but not necessarily all) conventions for writing a tonal musical phrase. Occasionally, it will produce something interesting, but most of the time it is quite dull. It won't sound much like Mozart.

To get the music to sound like Mozart, Haydn, Hummel or Pleyel, it would have to be much less random. It would be necessary to feed it patterns that are characteristic of those composers. But then the score would just be a rearranged piece by somebody else. While the music is largely random, it tends to be quite boring. That suggests that these composers did more than follow rules...

Theory Home

GCDYO Home