A simple application for manually identifying chords and constructing chord progressions using the mouse. I wrote this program for myself as a way to bridge the gap between my basic music theory knowledge and my lack of ear training. Use this program to quickly construct the outline of a composition or song that you can then fill in with more detail later. You can check out the source code on github. Included is an executable for Windows, a rich soundfont to get you started, and a folder with some example chord progressions I made while testing the software.
HOW TO USE:
The program has two tables. The right table corresponds to a list of "all" chords containing the notes highlighted in the input column. Each row corresponds to a note and each column corresponds to a different chord. The input acts as a filter to narrow down the range of possible chords to look through. Highlighted cells are are the notes of the chord that will be played if you click the column heading, while cells with text in them that are not highlighted are also in the chord but will not be played. The articulation of the chord ("inversion") can be changed from the initial result by selecting or deselecting notes. The darker shade corresponds to the root of the chord.
The left table corresponds to a sequence of chords that can be added to by copying/pasting chords (e.g. from the right table). The sequence can then be saved to a text file (*.chord) and loaded later from the File menu.
Controls for both tables are similar:
- LCLICK: Play a note or chord
- RCLICK: Select/deselect a note, or delete a chord
- SHIFT+LCLICK: Copy a chord
- SHIFT+RCLICK: Paste a chord (into chord sequence or input column)
- CTRL+SHIFT+RCLICK: Insert a chord into chord sequence
When you play a note or chord, the program uses the currently loaded soundfont to synthesize the sound. Notes played contiue to play until a new note or chord is played (or, if you "play" an empty cell to stop them). You can choose whether all notes in a chord are played simultaneously, or are played in an ascending/descending order with a small delay by moving the "Strum delay" slider. You can load a new soundfont with the "Load Soundfont" button, or choose a different instrument preset with the dropdown menu. The program comes with a default soundfont ("Timbres of Heaven" by Don Allen, http://midkar.com/soundfonts/ ) but you can find others to use. You can change the default startup values in the config.ini file (e.g. the soundfont loaded on startup, save path, and more).
An example use case:
- Listen to a song whose chords you want to transcribe
- Left click the input column to play various notes until you find one or more that seem to be in the chord, then highlight them to generate a list of possible chords
- Left click the chord labels (at the top of the table) to play different chords and see if they match what you're looking for
- Once you find the chord you want, shift-click to copy it and then paste it into the sequence table.
- Repeat this process for the next chord, and so on.
- Save your progress to a file to refrence it later.
- Click on chords in succession from the sequence table to hear the progression you've built up.
- Sing along, share the sequence, or reference the sequence as you create an arrangement.
Tips:
- You can copy and paste to/from the input column. Chords pasted from the input column will be labelled as "?".
- Playing chord(s) leading up to the current chord your are trying to identify is helpful.
- You can do this by clicking in the sequence table.
- Often the melody is easiest to identify and you may not be certain when a chord changes.
- You can paste individual notes from the input column into the chord sequence and then reference them when figuring out the progression.
- The leftmost column in the sequence table is there to provide note labels, but you can also highlight these cells to act as a reference e.g. for identifying what notes are in the key of the song.
Video summary of my high school senior design project from 2014. It was completed over the course of a semester as the capstone of the Project Lead the Way (PLTW) engineering magnet program.
With the COVID-19 pandemic winding down I had this idea for a parody of "Barrett's Privateers" by Stan Rogers. Enjoy!
From the Georgia Tech Glee Club's 2019 trip to Scotland. Sung on the very banks of Loch Lomond.
Snowboarding in beautiful northern New Mexico mountains.
The Shepard tone is an auditory illusion of perpetually rising pitch. It's a continuous process. But what if you did it in discrete steps?
A video demonstrating the uploading process on the alpha launch of Upstart, and two sketches of marketing videos (how it works, and a simple ad)
My roommate pointed out that you could get interesting effects by pointing your webcam at your screen to create a feedback loop. I explored this a bit and got some pretty interesting results, especially as I began to understand what was happening and created a more controlled environment. The evolution is driven by the round-trip magnification, reorientation, gain, and point spread function. All of these vary slightly across the screen and lens and color channels, and can be adjusted by camera position, orientation, focus, and gain. If round-trip magnification is less than 1, you have a stuff moving from the edge of the screen towards a convergence point. If the magnification is greater than 1, you have signal (e.g. noise) from the convergence point propagating outward. If you get the magnification close to 1, then signals propagate very slowly and can even become persistent if the magnification varies with position due to the lens and screen. Very fun.
This third set of videos were generally at a magnification near 1, where signals only very slowly migrate in or out and can become fairly persistent.
The Blob Opera is a machine learning experiment by David Lin in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture. You can play with it yourself here. You can harmonize on the fly, but you can also hack into the web app to upload programmed instructions following the steps included here. There was one issue of the blobs sustaining their last note. That can be solved by modifying the conversion code, which I did later on.
Bonus clip: speech synthesis from the game "Moon Base Alpha" (which is based on the DECTalk program) being used to sing my TTBB arrangement of Ghost Riders in the Sky.
My roommate pointed out that you could get interesting effects by pointing your webcam at your screen to create a feedback loop. I explored this a bit and got some pretty interesting results, especially as I began to understand what was happening and created a more controlled environment. The evolution is driven by the round-trip magnification, reorientation, gain, and point spread function. All of these vary slightly across the screen and lens and color channels, and can be adjusted by camera position, orientation, focus, and gain. If round-trip magnification is less than 1, you have a stuff moving from the edge of the screen towards a convergence point. If the magnification is greater than 1, you have signal (e.g. noise) from the convergence point propagating outward. If you get the magnification close to 1, then signals propagate very slowly and can even become persistent if the magnification varies with position due to the lens and screen. Very fun.
This first set of videos, when I was just starting out, were generally at a magnification of less than one, so that's how I decided the end of the first "episode."
A battle chant of the Aiel warriors from the Wheel of Time series. I hadn't found many musical interpretations of this chant so I made one. Ideally this would be sung by hundreds instead of a handful of the same voice.
A once in an erewhon trajectory on an organic spaceship. A progressive house instrumental, inspired by Open Eyed Signal by Jon Hopkins.
Cover art by the incredible @lexokowalli on Instagram
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Just a meme, but I wrote some interesting code to generate the "alignment" effect of stars viewed from a certain angle. The script is included in the .m file. The language is matlab but you can probably figure out how to port it if you want to use it.
Occasionally when using the engineering item Gnomish Shrink Ray your character would be enlarged significantly. Even more interestingly, the effect stacked with other enlargement effects, which was disabled for most such items. Combining with a large based model (the tauren) and then riding a very large base model mount (rampaging yak item) I was able to make an immensely large yak for a few moments. The shrink ray also worked in arenas, which is also unusual. You'd have to give up a trinket slot to use it, putting you at a minor disadvantage, but on the other hand the startling change and intimidation can bring its own advantage.
I never got to try this but at the time I recall rogues having an ability that would let them copy the models of large entities like bosses. It stands to reason that if Blizzard forgot to consider the interactions of this item with others, rogues might be able to be even more ridiculously large.
The cow-bird makes a most unusual warble; it sounds like water burbling over small rocks in a stream. I was unable to capture the warble here, but at last I have a video of the bird.
I've recently gotten into mapping for Beat Saber and am working on an album from one of my favorite artists. Here is the first finished level with a playthrough.
Lyrics to "La Storia di un Soldalto" (The Story of a Soldier) from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).
My roommate pointed out that you could get interesting effects by pointing your webcam at your screen to create a feedback loop. I explored this a bit and got some pretty interesting results, especially as I began to understand what was happening and created a more controlled environment. The evolution is driven by the round-trip magnification, reorientation, gain, and point spread function. All of these vary slightly across the screen and lens and color channels, and can be adjusted by camera position, orientation, focus, and gain. If round-trip magnification is less than 1, you have a stuff moving from the edge of the screen towards a convergence point. If the magnification is greater than 1, you have signal (e.g. noise) from the convergence point propagating outward. If you get the magnification close to 1, then signals propagate very slowly and can even become persistent if the magnification varies with position due to the lens and screen. Very fun.
This second set of videos were generally at a magnification of greater than one.
Hers the doom, ours the mirth
when she came home from work
Time to cook a tasty meal
What will lid reveal?
Ever looked at the logistic map and wondered what it would sound like if the pattern corresponded to frequencies being played? Wonder no longer! Also included is the code used to generate it if you want to try it yourself.
What better way to remember an operational plan than by song? A parody of the Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond, as arranged by Jerry Ulrich for the Georgia Tech Glee Club in 2019.
A video demonstrating the uploading process on the alpha launch of Upstart, and two sketches of marketing videos (how it works, and a simple ad).
This cute little guy visited in the spring of 2020, munching clover outside our bedroom window. Sorry for the poor video quality. All I had near to hand was the cell phone, but I couldn't miss this!