The Pirate Fugues

Diese ganze Stelle ist gestohlen aus der Mozartschen Sinfonie in c wo das Andante in 6 8tel aus den...
Ludwig van Beethoven

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Starting in 2009, I created the software The Pirate Fugues to compose music with recurring motifs that obeys the harmonics used by Johann Sebastian Bach. The program extracts criteria from the 2-part Inventions, the 3-part Sinfonias, the preludes and fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier I and II, as well as the scores from The Art of Fugue. The files of these scores are provided by MuseData at Stanford University. Scans of print editions of the scores are available as pdf documents at the Petrucci Music Library.

Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?
Steve Jobs

The title The Pirate Fugues ought to reflect the nature of the software which is along the zeitgeist: the operators of the website ThePirateBay.org were convicted for assisting in making copyrighted content available; and Pirate (political) parties emerged across Europe. Jag lyfter på hatten för Piratbukten!

Along the way, I discovered that in the 1980's David Cope had been successful to auto generate chorals in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach. Here is an article about his work and his views, to which I agree to a great extent.

The Pirate Fugues (with Java 1.6 Source) *

ThePirateFugues.zip

800 kB

* the archive contains files from MuseData. The binaries are not included in the archive! To run the software compile the code with Java 1.6 or later. ThePiratesFugues.java contains the relevant main. I thank Sébastien Cooman for teaching me best practices in Java and encouraging code development with Eclipse. Audio feedback (MIDI) adapted from JavaSoundDemo by Brian Lichtenwalter and others.

Future versions of The Pirate Fugues will feature a collection of plugins to select different algorithms for gap completion.

Credits: As an expert on Bach music, Mathias Müller tested the software and helped on musical aspects. Jürgen Kilian assisted me on the export to the Guido music notation.

T.I.A. - this is Africa
Australia

Hell, there are no rules here –
we're trying to accomplish something
Thomas Edison

Repertoire

repertoire for Fuga V of the WTC II

A sequence of notes that is conceptually reused in the score is refered to as material. Any material shall have the following properties:

• material is single-voiced
• material is not interrupted by rests
• material consists at least of 4 notes
• two materials are conceptually identical if the length of all notes, except the last one, match, and if the change in pitch between two successive notes is of the same signature: up, down, or equal
• material occurs at least twice in the score
• material that occurs early (timewise) in the score has precedence for the similarity checks

A repertoire is a list of materials. Each voice of the score is patched from variations of materials in the repertoire.

To facilitate the identification of each material when listening to the score, each material is assigned an instrument with a volume, and a reverb coefficient.

The instruments available are: Piano, Bright Piano, Marimba, Church Organ, Accordion, Nylon Str Guitar, Steel String Guitar, Violin, Orchestral Harp, Trumpet, Trombone, Tuba, French Horn, Soprano Sax, Oboe, Bassoon, Pan Flute, Metal Pad, Crystal, Sitar, Banjo, Bag Pipe, Tinkle Bell, Steel Drums.

Wege entstehen dadurch,
dass man sie geht.
Franz Kafka

instrument chooser with Marimba selected, volume 80, and reverb 40

Score

The Pirate Fugues software searches for possibilities to fill empty voices with note sequences in accordance to the database of Bach scores. Audio feedback of parts of the score or individual voices allows to check the composition. Screenshot

All editing is done with the mouse. However, there are a few keypresses assigned: s save score, a select all, space start/stop audio feedback

There are two algorithms that assist the user in setting the right notes:

Inlay: The computer searches all possible sequence of notes within a gap in a voice. The sequences have to obey the Bach criteria. The user filters the options for rhythmic and melodic specifications. Additionally, the sequences are rated according to the Bach-rank measure.

Tower: The computer searches all possible combination of notes for a certain time in the score for all voices.

Sometimes I wonder
how any human male
survives childhood.
Sawdust Jones

Pattern

A view on the global structure of the fugue, the temporal distribution of the motifs for each voice. The voices congregated to trace the bandwidth of the sound.

Work Hard.
Be Nice.
Jay Mathews