I already brought this up in the suggestions, but how do you feel about the game producing actual music following the rules you generate? As in, simple one voice folk songs that you hear when you walk by a musician who's playing. I made a song following one of your formats by just picking random notes and rests within the chords generated for a form.
https://soundcloud.com/nethodsod/the-grasping-oaks
It should be quite easy to program, since all I did was follow the two meters exactly, and then pick a random sequence from the chords for the melody. It alternates between the two chords, and has a brief segment where I randomly picked any notes from the whole scale. That happens between 1:45 and 2:30.
A form of music used for entertainment originating in The Grasping Oaks. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. A chanter recites the words of a (name of poetic form here) while the music is played on a rofela. The entire performance slows and broadens. It is performed using the tarathe scale and in the bulifo rhythm. Throughout, when possible, performers are to use grace notes, alternate tension and repose and play arpeggios.
The chanter always does the main melody, should be passionate and is to be loud.
The rofela always does the main melody, should be melancholic and is to be soft.
The form has a well-defined multi-passage structure: a theme, a brief exposition of the theme and a brief recapitulation of the theme.
Scales are constructed from twenty-four notes spaced evenly throughout the octave. The tonic note is a fixed tone passed from teacher to student. After a scale is constructed, the root note of chords are named. The names are cuthefi (spoken cu) and cede (ce).
The tarathe pentatonic scale is thought of as joined chords spanning a perfect fifth and a perfect fourth. These chords are named aratha and fathinu.
The aratha tetrachord is the 1st, the 4th, the 9th and the 15th degrees of the quartertone octave scale.
The fathinu trichord is the 15th, the 19th and the 25th (completing the octave) degrees of the quartertone octave scale.
The bulifo rhythm is made from two patterns: the emu (considered the primary) and the otoga. The patterns are to be played in the same beat, allowing one to repeat before the other is concluded.
The emu rhythm is a single line with twenty-seven beats divided into five bars in a 7-6-4-6-4 pattern. The beat is stressed as follows:
| - - x x - - x | - - x x - x | - - x - | - - - x x - | x x x x |
where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
The otoga rhythm is a single line with eighteen beats divided into two bars in a 11-7 pattern. The beat is stressed as follows:
| x - - x x x - - x - - | x - x - - - - |
where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
This song should be accompanied by a chant. Given the name, I suspect it should be an elvish chant of an unspecified but specific poetic form. It's a primary melody done passionate and loudly. Also the chordal guidelines were 'melancholic and soft' for the instrument.
Generated music suffers from the interpretation problem. Toady couldn't make something that could do this justice, although we can take the data and demonstrate the richness it represents. That is what really makes this game great. I look forward to hearing what you output on the next release, but don't expect this in the game because it isn't practical. Unless you really want to argue my opinion of the tone being not soft or melancholic is an error on my part and most of the world would disagree? I guess he could eliminate the descriptions and make it an entire generated sound file, but then he'll have to make that poetry generator he always threatens about in the form he threatens, and a text to speech synthesizer, and other stuff that is inconsistent with an ascii game he made.
No, what you ask for is and always will be in the realm of user created content. Inspired by DF, but made by us. Please though, make more, inspired by the legends of worlds you play in.
