I wanted to challenge myself and create a different type of software based interface for playing different notes.
Meet, the Infinite Melodic Sequencer!
The idea is simple:
The canvas is moving left continuously (like Mario Bros)
You drag your mouse to add a point into the space
When the point reaches a playhead, a note is played
Pitch is controlled by the Y axis
The instrument comes with a G# pentatonic major scale built in. The frequencies for the different notes were taken from this page.
Why the pentatonic scale? Because of the nature of this interface, the user will most likely scatter notes around and a chromatic, major or minor scale is had a bit of dissonance.
For the Tone.js use in this project, the main synth is a ten-voice PolySynth. A few effects are added to make a more interesting sound such as a Tone.Reverb, Tone.Chorus and Tone.Delay, as well as some tweaks to the envelop's attack.
I really enjoyed myself developing this.
Key learnings
I know practically nothing about synthesizers – Any book recommendations?
I really need to find more inspiration sources for the graphical aspect of my experiments. I'm feeling a bit stuck in this regard.
Some P5.js specifics need to be tailored inside my process
But, most importantly...
THE INTERFACE DICTATES THE COMPOSITION.
What I mean by this is that having a mouse over a pentatonic grid as an interface steers the possible outcomes in that specific direction.
Could we create an infinite interface for musical expression?