[PD] pd-based procedural chord progression database..

[David Powers]

First of all, from a personal and very prejudiced point of view, I think,
you should consider having progressions of "cells" and ditch this triadic
way of thinking. I often like harmonically static music, I don't think
that's the problem. I think the problem is that the harmony chosen is of the
simplest kind. For minimal types of techno, I prefer static over the kinds
of stupid triad sequences we get in pop music and such. However, it's best
if the harmony chosen were some cell like, F Gb A Bb B Eb, much less
offensive than C E G. If you do stick with triads, consider Wagnerian type
sequences and chromatic cycles.

I can tell from the jazz point of view, C major is not what it is in
classical music. For instance, giving an extremely simple example, the
construction C E G B D F# A, would be a perfectly valid chord to impose over
C major. Or, listen to John Coltrane live solos on "Impressions", which goes
{D minor, D minor, Eb minor, D minor} -- harmonically static, yet inclusive
of all 12 notes (not too mention some sounds that can't really be described
as notes per so).

Also, any solutions will be trivial, if they do not have the possibility to
produce bad results. It might be cooler, to have a computer spit out
progressions, and you choose whether you like it. Perhaps a neural net could
learn your taste in harmony?

Technically, this sounds like a job for markov chains.

~David

On 8/11/06, Damian Stewart <damian at frey.co.nz> wrote:
>
> hey everyone
>
> i'm setting out to build an automatic chord progression system - you tell
> it to start in C Major, centre around E minor, with a given deviance
> factor, and then bang it repeatedly and it spits out a new chord/voicing
> each time you bang it, that makes harmonic sense and sounds good as a
> progression.
>
> (why? it struck me while i was listening to my friend's set the other
> night
> that too much dance- or dance-derived music is harmonically static. simple
> solution: make a quasi-intelligent system that knows what progressions
> sound good, and get it to do all the work. imagining coupling it up to
> fiddle~ and a vocalist..)
>
> based on jazz harmony theory, which i have had the tiniest of nosies into,
> this will involve encoding knowledge about all twelve scales, major and
> minor, as well as the modes and relationships between them. before i
> start,
> is there anything i should look at that might help, or solve the problem
> for me, or make the whole idea irrelevant?
>
> cheers
> d
>
> --
> f r e y
> live music with machines
> http://www.frey.co.nz
>
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