Johann Sebastian Bach has shown us the way. The fugues have facinated me for many years. I spent a lot of time to practice the fugues on piano, and analyze their structure with the computer. His music has inspired me to pursue data-driven music composition to imitate his style.
The Pirate Fugues |
Schemellis Gesangbuch BWV 439–507 |
Digitization of Scores by Johann Sebastian Bach |
Photos from the Museum of Instruments Hamamatsu |
Comparison of notation fonts for Lilypond |
The way Johann Sebastian Bach reuses and arranges melodies within a single piece is unparalleled. His fugues are the mountaintop of this craftmanship.
If a piece contains trioles, the size of the grid that rasterizes the notes is required to contain a 3 as a factor. For instance the raster of a measure is of size 2.2.3, or 2.3.2. However, as is typical for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the raster needs a second factor 3. For instance, 2.3.2.3. Unlike other composers, the division of a measure might not be constant over a piece: The raster might change from 2.3.2.3 to 2.3.3.2 etc. This means, the trioles might be quarters as well as sixteenth, and at a later point in quarters and eighths. The string quartets are full of that, which might make them so hard to play.
Midi Controls for Hauptwerk Organs |
NoteZcore · Note Extraction from Piano Recordings |
Compositions |
Piano Transcriptions |
In the past, I used the following software to notate music:
For a long time, I focussed on the algorithms to suggest motifs and chords in music composition. However, accurate playback of the music is just as important during the process of refining the score. The limitations of the default MIDI synthesizer really bothered me. Stefan Ehrlich recommended me to combine
For comparison of before and after, please listen to the two versions of the La Campanella fugue below.
Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!
Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht,
Ist wert, daß es zugrunde geht;
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Concept for a Piano Concert - To Charlotte | opus09_chb.mid | 23 kB |
For Natascha 2003 | opus08_nwb.mid | 14 kB |
Pseudo Canon | opus07_can.mid | 6 kB |
For Natascha 2002 | opus02_nwb.mid | 17 kB |
Whatever is begun in anger
ends in shame.
Benjamin Franklin
The piano transcriptions below were manufactured to accompany singers of the improvisation theater at the University Frankfurt/Germany, 2009.
The font guido2.ttf might be required to view the pdf-files. Under Windows, simply copy the ttf-file into the folder windows/fonts.
Constantinople | constantinople.pdf | 15 kB |
Drunkards Child | drunkards-child.pdf | 16 kB |
Gimme-Gimme (ABBA) | gimme-gimme.pdf | 16 kB |
Glorious Beer | glorious-beer.pdf | 15 kB |
Jasmine Flower (Chinese folk song) | jasmine-flower.pdf | 16 kB |
Modern General | modern-general.pdf | 14 kB |
Oklahoma | oklahoma.pdf | 17 kB |
Policemans Song | policemans-song... | 17 kB |
almost, but not quite,
entirely unlike tea
Arthur Dent