Music Laboratory Research->Media Art->Original Art Work->Music Plant

About MusicPlant

The Musical Plant is a virtual life that resides in a PC and accepts signals from a MIDI control devices such as a keyboard. This is a mysterious device that when you play any song on the electronic piano, a different song is generated and played back based on that song. When you start playing, a virtual plant displayed on the monitor will start to grow.

The shape of the plant is not fixed, but reflects what you played at the time. A certain rule is assigned between the notes on the scale and the direction in which the branches grow. When the player hits one key on an electronic piano, a branch is added to the plant. Furthermore, if you hit two keys at the same time, two branches will grow at the same time. The plant grows as it receives MIDI signals, and it takes a shape that is determined by the characteristics of the input. The shape thus becomes a reflection of the MIDI input. Some MIDI songs will generate complex shapes while others will generate relatively simple shapes according to the musical form of the MIDI song.

Before the player begins to input a MIDI signal, the primitive plant with a stem is at the center of the PC display. As signals are input, branches are added to the plant. Each MIDI note generates a branch of the plant. The angle of each branch is determined by the musical context of the note. Plant characteristics such as branch angle and length are changed with respect to MIDI parameters such as note number and note intervals.

After a while after the performance stops (input of the MIDI signal stops), the plants will be redrawn and the playback of song will begin. Each branches being redrawn creates a series of sounds. When a branch is drawn, the sound assigned to the branch is played, but this sound is not the same as the sound when the branch was generated. It is converted according to certain rules. The sound intervals are derived from the notes that made the branch.

In the drawing where branches are drawn from the base of the plant, the time flow is the same, but the sound produced when redrawing is the original pitch reversed. For example, if the pitch of a major chord is flipped, it becomes a minor chord. This is because a chord made by stacking a minor third and a major third is converted into a chord made by stacking a major third and a minor third. As for the entire song, songs in a major key are converted into songs in a minor key, and songs in a minor key are converted into songs in a major key, so bright music is played back as gloomy music, and gloomy music becomes bright music.

I call this vertical reversing of music.
Vertical reversing means that redrawing proceeds in the same order as in creation, but the sound of each redrawing branch reverses the interval of the original note. That is, when the interval is reversed, higher notes become lower notes. Also, when reversing is applied, minor chords become major chords since the relation of notes is reversed.

The musical plant analogy provides a way to visualize the composition and decomposition processes. For example similar MIDI songs will tend to generate similar plant shapes. The music plant analogy also aids in determining the essential elements of a "good tune". Many well-known songs also sound good when played in reverse order. The more musical the original performance, the more musical the music returned when redrawing. If you play randomly, the music returned when redrawing will also sound random.