Brad
2006-01-30, 16:24
I'm writing a few little programs to help me with a music composition class I'm taking for fun this semester. My current favorite is one that reads in MIDI files and generate a series of notes and durations based on patterns in those songs. I'm not satisfied, though, and am looking for something a little more interesting.
Enter my hair-brained scheme to involve fractals.
:)
Now, honestly, I'm a bit green when it comes to the mathematical approach to fractals. I know the basics of fractal geometry that we all learned in grade school like Pascal's Triangles and such. You take a pattern and you repeat it over various sections recursively.
How does this work with ranges/sequences of numbers? Are there specific programming techniques used to generate fractal data? Iterative or recursive? Are there particular algorithms that have to be followed or can one just "make up" a fractal that works? What resources should I investigate as a "Fractals for Dummies" sort of guide? Don't tell me to Google it; most results are fairly worthless. :p
In case it matters, I'm using Java so I don't have to write my own helper functions to manually extract the MIDI data.
If I do manage to produce a piece of music that is more than just "academic" and sounds moderately pleasing, I'll be sure to share it with you all. No promises, though! Most computer-generated music that I've studied generally sounds like total junk to Joe Sixpack. It may not be any time soon, too, because this is supposed to be a semester-long project.
Enter my hair-brained scheme to involve fractals.
:)
Now, honestly, I'm a bit green when it comes to the mathematical approach to fractals. I know the basics of fractal geometry that we all learned in grade school like Pascal's Triangles and such. You take a pattern and you repeat it over various sections recursively.
How does this work with ranges/sequences of numbers? Are there specific programming techniques used to generate fractal data? Iterative or recursive? Are there particular algorithms that have to be followed or can one just "make up" a fractal that works? What resources should I investigate as a "Fractals for Dummies" sort of guide? Don't tell me to Google it; most results are fairly worthless. :p
In case it matters, I'm using Java so I don't have to write my own helper functions to manually extract the MIDI data.
If I do manage to produce a piece of music that is more than just "academic" and sounds moderately pleasing, I'll be sure to share it with you all. No promises, though! Most computer-generated music that I've studied generally sounds like total junk to Joe Sixpack. It may not be any time soon, too, because this is supposed to be a semester-long project.