#1

Markov Music v1.0

Make music with a simple Markov chain.

Inspiration

Sean Booth via an interview on Resident Advisor:

[…] but it might at least resemble the way a person thinks. It’s funny, I’ve been reading about Markov models and Markov chains recently, the results from Markov Chains are remarkably similar to what you get out of Watson or DeepMind, these super advanced language modelling things. And this article was about how unwieldy that kind of mega-gigantic, expensive AI is, because you can actually achieve very close results using Markov chains, and they’re really fucking simple, they’re computationally really easy to deal with, they’re what people use for Twitterbots and things like that. So in some ways these simple conditional responses can resemble very high-end AI. Even though it’s very simple, the result is close enough not to matter.

Requirements

  • grid
  • Max

Documentation

  • Be sure to save and re-open after pasting from clipboard to initialize the patch.
  • Fastest way to learn is to watch the video above!
  • Set the “link” probabilities by holding down the link and selecting a percentage [10%, 20%, 30%, … 100%]. AA & AB are hard coupled. CC & CB are hard coupled. BB, BA, and BC are hard coupled. Change a percentage on one and it changes the coupled percentages as well.
  • Set the pad notes by holding down the pad and selecting a note. Built with grid Keyboard.
  • Start / stop with [x0, y2].
  • Nudge speed up and down with [x0, y7] & [x0, y8].

markov-music-p1
markov-music-p12386×1491 594 KB

markov-music-p2
markov-music-p22386×1491 319 KB

markov-music-p3
markov-music-p32386×1491 457 KB

markov-music-p4
markov-music-p42386×1491 297 KB

markov-music-p5
markov-music-p52386×1491 470 KB

markov-music-p6
markov-music-p62386×1491 310 KB

Download

37 Likes
New to monome, and monome + modular: ask questions here
#3

sweeeeet! can’t wait to dive in! thnx

1 Like
#4

rad! is this all max? or is there js/lua embedded?

1 Like
#5

Super cool docs, love it!

1 Like
#6

Can we embed either in a compressed max share?

(I have to test that later! Just assumed we could not.)

#7

Pure Max! I’ll need to check out lua…

2 Likes
#8

this looks very nice,… and is really what I need to get me deeper into max again.thx

1 Like
#9

@mheton Thank you! Here’s another little project I built with Max that I’m super proud of and might give you some more ideas. It’s a M4L sequencer that holds every possible combination of eighth notes in a 4/4 bar and lets you quickly cycle through them all. I’m going to port this over to arc for my next project.

3 Likes
#10

I have a love hate relationship with max. Since a while I want to get more into max, to work out my monome stuff, and than I always get stuck somewhere and move to more enjoyable things in live than coding.

#11

Thank you for this great release!

image
I applaud you for this. When I’m trying no make a grid layout, I’m losing my mind over how to make most use of grid real estate. Just use what you currently need. Leave the rest for another thing. Boom.

3 Likes
#12

@mheton yeah, I definitely need to be in the mood to Max. I’ll tell myself, “OK, finish this one feature of your new patch in the morning, then you get to shred some new tunes in the evening.” Applying agile software development principals like wire-framing, spikes, and time-boxing helps me a lot, too. There is nothing worse than sinking two hours into a patch, only to realize it wasn’t viable from the start and you have to scrap it.

@sakul That’s amazing! I’ve spent years wishing I could just toggle a row on my midi controllers to do something else, so I have the opposite of your problem now: how am I going to use all 128 keys?!?!

1 Like