Concept
Procedural music
(No coding required)
Automatune makes it easy for everyone to explore procedural music. You don’t need to be a coder, or even a musician. Just fire it up and start adding notes!
Here’s how to get started:
- Start up the pre-alpha app prototype.
- Click on a tile to add an arrow. Click again to change its direction.
- Right click an arrow to assign a note. Every time the circle visits that tile, the note will play.
The finished version of Automatune will support all sorts of widgets to make your music more interesting.
Tech
100% Browser-Based
(No plugins required)
Automatune will be written entirely using W3C standards-compliant browser APIs. This means you can create music on any device - Windows, Mac, Linux, even your grandma’s cell phone. Here are a few of the technologies that will be used:
- HTML5/CSS3/JS
- Web Audio API
- CSS Transitions and Animations
- Smooth frame-based animation using requestAnimationFrame
- Support for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE10+
You will be able to easily share your creations with others - no accounts, no hassle! Just copy the sharing link and email it to your friend, IM it to your colleague, or scribble it on a piece of paper and send it through the mail.
Features
Completely Customizable
Automatune will include many interactive components, which will allow for literally endless customization. (For the tech crowd, this means it will be turing complete!) Here are a few of the widgets in store:
- Arrows that change direction each time they are visited
- Tiles that create new visitors periodically, or when they are visited by another visitor
- Visitors that play notes upon interacting with other visitors
- Tiles that pause a visitor until a counterpart tile is visited
And many many more! (But don’t worry - they will all be thoroughly explained!)
Related
Related Works
Automatune was inspired by Tone Matrix (HTML5 version), and incorporates a similar approach to 2D visual programming as the game SpaceChem.
Here is a list of some additional related projects:
- ToneCraft and Plink, web music experiments by Dinahmoe.
- WolframTones, an exploration of music generated by cellular automata.
- Music from Very Short Programs, a showcase of music created by interpreting output from very small programs as sound.
- Abundant-Music, an algorithmic music generator by Per Nyblom.
- Sim Cell sound design by Leonard J. Paul.
- Electroplankton, an interactive music game for the Nintendo DS handheld gaming system.