Matt FournierITGM 705Professor David E. MeyersProject 1

Composers Companion

The Composers Companion is a simple application to help composers create music. The user picks an instrument from a drop down list and chooses what not that instrument will play on the time scale. The user drags and drops those different notes onto a music scale and the application plays the music back with the intended instrument. The notes can be translated into a variety of different instruments. This application will be helpful for those who wish to create their own music without having to own an entire orchestra. The sound quality will obviously not be as good as playing real instruments and will be comparable to a key board. I want to focus this project around the simplicity of it. I have used other audio editing programs such as Acid Pro and have just felt bogged down by the interface. Knowing how to read music and how it translates into other instruments, I longed for a simple way to put notes onto a page and hear it back. My interface is as simple as you can get, choose your instrument, choose the note and hit play. Combining different instrumental tracks would have to be a little more complex. The Composers Companion assumes you already have a solid knowledge of musical notes, instruments and can read sheet music.This fits Murrays definition of the digital medium, it has a data base of different instruments and how they should sound on each note, manipulating the sound based on the note and how long each is played. The Composers Companion has a large participation factor similar to a game. The user chooses what instrument they wish to work with and which notes it should be playing. The user can also combine different tracks they have written to create duets or symphonies of music. A clarinets could be combines with a trumpet and drum or whatever else the user wishs.The procedural relationship is quite simple, if the user instructs the program that a piano is to play an A sharp, the computer plays that note. The user may also download sheet music into this application and have songs laid out for the user to manipulate music and change instruments of other compositions. The Composers Companion could be created as a cell phone or computer application. Here we will focus on a personal computer application. The bar on the left will display all of the notes; the user will drag and drop the notes onto the blank sheet music. The user will also have to set the time scale and other options. There will also be a separate page to play back the music so you can sample what you have created. After you have something you like, its time to find a real orchestra to play your masterpiece.

Start up screen with a blank music sheet.User changing instruments.

User part way through writing music.

Play back screen