Music Analysis and Composition


Studio German D in Ivory II

Johann Sebastian Bach has shown us the way. The fugues have facinated me for many years. I spent a lot of time to practice the fugues on piano, and analyze their structure with the computer. His music has inspired me to pursue data-driven music composition to imitate his style.


Blüthner Model One in Pianoteq 5.0.1

The music projects are hosted at djtascha.de:

The Pirate Fugues
Schemellis Gesangbuch BWV 439–507
Digitization of Scores by Johann Sebastian Bach

The way Johann Sebastian Bach reuses and arranges melodies within a single piece is unparalleled. His fugues are the mountaintop of this craftmanship.

If a piece contains trioles, the size of the grid that rasterizes the notes is required to contain a 3 as a factor. For instance the raster of a measure is of size 2.2.3, or 2.3.2. However, as is typical for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the raster needs a second factor 3. For instance, 2.3.2.3. Unlike other composers, the division of a measure might not be constant over a piece: The raster might change from 2.3.2.3 to 2.3.3.2 etc. This means, the trioles might be quarters as well as sixteenth, and at a later point in quarters and eighths. The string quartets are full of that, which might make them so hard to play.

Midi Controls for Hauptwerk Organs
NoteZcore · Note Extraction from Piano Recordings
Compositions
Piano Transcriptions

In the past, I used the following software to notate music:

For a long time, I focussed on the algorithms to suggest motifs and chords in music composition. However, accurate playback of the music is just as important during the process of refining the score. The limitations of the default MIDI synthesizer really bothered me. Stefan Ehrlich recommended me to combine

For comparison of before and after, please listen to the two versions of the La Campanella fugue below.

Finally, here is a playlist of modern songs that literally struck a chord in me: The Voice Within by Christina Aguilera [Album Stripped, 2002], Centerfold by Pink [Album I'm Not Dead, 2006], Amnesia by Britney Spears [Album Circus, 2008]. When I am getting a bit tired, but would still like to get some programming done, I put on the discography of Linkin Park. Their Lost in the Echo from [Living Things, 2012] is always a good injection.

Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!
Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht,
Ist wert, daß es zugrunde geht;
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Compositions

Concept for a Piano Concert - To Charlotte opus09_chb.mid 23 kB
For Natascha 2003 opus08_nwb.mid 14 kB
Pseudo Canon opus07_can.mid 6 kB
For Natascha 2002 opus02_nwb.mid 17 kB
... or download the scores as Finale mus-files and view them with Finale Reader.
Whatever is begun in anger
ends in shame.
Benjamin Franklin

Piano Transcriptions

The piano transcriptions below were manufactured to accompany singers of the improvisation theater at the University Frankfurt/Germany, 2009.

The font guido2.ttf might be required to view the pdf-files. Under Windows, simply copy the ttf-file into the folder windows/fonts.

Constantinople constantinople.pdf 15 kB
Drunkards Child drunkards-child.pdf 16 kB
Gimme-Gimme (ABBA) gimme-gimme.pdf 16 kB
Glorious Beer glorious-beer.pdf 15 kB
Jasmine Flower (Chinese folk song) jasmine-flower.pdf 16 kB
Modern General modern-general.pdf 14 kB
Oklahoma oklahoma.pdf 17 kB
Policemans Song policemans-song... 17 kB
... or download the collection as gmn-files and view them with GUIDO note viewer.
almost, but not quite,
entirely unlike tea
Arthur Dent