from Hacker News

Music Mouse

by raldu on 11/19/22, 10:36 AM with 57 comments

  • by lioeters on 11/21/22, 9:07 AM

    It's a modern Web Audio implementation of this Mac software from 1986 (last updated in 2004).

    Music Mouse - An Intelligent Instrument - https://web.archive.org/web/20220629172536fw_/http://retiary... (Archived because the original site is quite slow: http://retiary.org/ls/programs.html)

    It was written by Laurie Spiegel, a composer and early pioneer in electronic music.

    > Music Mouse is an algorithmic musical composition software developed by Laurie Spiegel. The "intelligent instrument" name refers to the program's built-in knowledge of chord and scale convention and stylistic constraints. Automating these processes allows the user to focus on other aspects of the music in real time.

    > In addition to improvisations using this software, Spiegel composed several works for "Music Mouse", including Cavis muris in 1986, Three Sonic Spaces in 1989, and Sound Zones in 1990. She continued to update the program through Macintosh OS 9 and, as of 2021, it remained available for purchase or demo download from her website.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Spiegel

    She was featured in the documentary, Sisters with Transistors. https://sisterswithtransistors.com/

  • by wantsanagent on 11/21/22, 2:17 PM

    Wow, this is probably the most intuitively enjoyable music tool I've ever used.

    I'm not a musician and I know very little about what makes music good, but playing with this tool felt like I was hearing a better version of my own imagination. Like those scenes in movies where people can suddenly play music and have no idea how they're doing it.

  • by trynewideas on 11/21/22, 5:13 PM

    By total chance, this revealed a flaw with my mouse that's been haunting me for months.

    My right mouse button intermittently doesn't bring up context menus, which I seemingly confirmed by recording the screen and visualizing click events in a presentation mode. It would show what looked like one right click, but no context menu, or a context menu that appeared and was immediately dismissed.

    But this revealed that it's actually rapidly sending multiple logical clicks per physical click. The logical clicks are fast enough that the screen recordings didn't differentiate them as separate events - which sent me in the wrong direction, making me think the OS was disregarding clicks. But here, the multiple clicks are clearly audible.

    So thanks!

  • by shubhamjain on 11/21/22, 11:23 AM

    As 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?

  • by tkam on 11/21/22, 11:38 AM

    Nice! 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.

  • by DefNotMe on 11/21/22, 1:45 PM

    Implementation of something like this in Pong would be brilliant, where the ball is the "mouse"

  • by franciscop on 11/21/22, 10:04 AM

    With the default settings and just scrolling around it really feels like I'm in some sort of badly played Ghibli's OST!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpfLKbjTWn0

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz68vFJmLKk

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFFy0yEYki0

  • by PaulDavisThe1st on 11/21/22, 3:13 PM

    As the world's most Curmudgeonly and Grumpy Old Man (TM) when it comes to web-based music applications ... THIS IS AMAZING. If I wasn't busy, I'd be implementing a native version of this right now. I know some of Laurie Spiegel's music, but had no idea she had ever designed anything like this. Just amazing.

  • by throwaway4837 on 11/21/22, 9:42 PM

    No matter where I move my cursor, it ends up sounding like an opening theme for a light-hearted anime series. Impressed at how melodic it sounds even though I don't know what I'm doing.

    Also please fix the mouse jacking. I was only able to regain control of my mouse after exiting the tab :(

  • by abruzzi on 11/21/22, 3:38 PM

    I played with the original a long time ago. IIRC, back then Laurie Spiegel asked for some kind of credit on music that was generated by it given that the musical output would be bounded by the software design.

    Also, if you've never heard her album Unseen Worlds, its definitly worth checking out.

  • by geocar on 11/21/22, 9:08 AM

    how fun.

    maybe the author does not know this, but shift+/ doesn't work on a portuguese keyboard at least in safari; shift-7 is / and shift-' is ?

    all of the other keys work.

  • by robinsonb5 on 11/21/22, 6:22 PM

    I had low expectations for this when I clicked the link and saw the spinny-rotatey loading ring (which for informational sites usually portends a wasted journey) - but I have to say this is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time! I think an FPGA-based implementation of this or something similar might end up on my projects list in the not too distant future...

  • by mojifwisi on 11/21/22, 8:57 PM

    Nice! That guy also made this interactive version of Terry Riley's "In C": https://teropa.info/in-c/

  • by dmd on 11/21/22, 8:12 PM

  • by thriftwy on 11/21/22, 11:02 AM

    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.

  • by pigcat on 11/21/22, 1:27 PM

    With 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.

  • by disillusioned on 11/21/22, 9:34 AM

    Wow, it's like a Keith Jarrett improv generator!

  • by drew-y on 11/21/22, 9:20 PM

    Is there a way to move the mouse without playing a key? I am using a touchpad, so maybe it can't be done without an actual mouse.

  • by jjarvis on 11/21/22, 9:17 PM

    Nice! I expect to see more applications like this with the introduction of Max's RNBO library a few weeks back.

  • by dbg31415 on 11/21/22, 2:06 PM

    I had this software when I was a kid on my Macintosh Classic.

    This brought back a lot of fond memories -- just doodling with sound.

    Thanks!

  • by maxbendick on 11/21/22, 4:32 PM

    Always love to see Tero Parviainen's new projects. Big inspiration for my webaudio tinkering.

  • by neosat on 11/21/22, 10:20 PM

    Incredible - loved it! This is what a modern digital music instrument should be like :)

  • by fire on 11/21/22, 9:44 AM

    god I clicked in and suddenly an hour went by, this is brilliant

  • by tabtab on 11/21/22, 7:16 PM

    Cool! It's kind of a glorified wind chime.

  • by mdmglr on 11/21/22, 7:20 PM

    Ingenious! Can I record in the app?

    How are the tones generated?

  • by cloogshicer on 11/21/22, 10:12 AM

    Is the source code available somewhere?