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  • Godot music improvisation game idea (4h prototype)

Hi everyone!

I just created a proof of concept of a music improvisation game idea I have.

If anyone's interested, please read on, and watch the short demo video linked below.

  • basic idea is to allow anyone with fingers under their control to improvise
  • computer plays accompaniment
  • computer will choose the exact pitch based on the currently playing harmony
  • please ignore the visuals (poc!)
  • accompaniment is complete crap (did I say it's a poc?)
  • currently, it's just a blues, using the same, fixed blues scale for all chords
  • there's probably prior art, but I had fun creating it and playing with it

Cheers
Sisyphean Musician


    kuligs2 In the prototype, just one. This is something I'm still mulling over. Polyphony is a lot more difficult to get to work with this kind of note correcting algorithm. I think this feature will have to wait for something like version 2 of the game. But it should be a lot of fun with just one note at a time.

        SisypheanMusician Actually, an idea just came to me how to realize polyphony... So I think I will add it more or less right from the start. It enhances the musical expressivity quite a bit.

          Also would be cool if you could use midi keyboards to plug in and play using the keyboard 🙂

          Absolutely part of the plan! However, in that case I would prefer to turn off the note correction feature (which currently is the core of my idea), otherwise it would feel so weird if you play a certain note and another one comes out of the speaker.

          In addition to just MIDI devices, I want to allow users to use anything they can hook up to their computer and that can act as an input device. That would include MIDI devices (there are solo instruments which may be way more fun than a piano style keyboard), but also things like your phone's touch screen via bluetooth (which would probably require an app for the phone). They user would have to "register" their custom device once, and if it is an unknown device type, they'd have to press all its keys or slide the screen or whatever, so that the game can make use of them.

          If and how and for what platforms that is feasible using Godot remains to be seen. There may e.g. be limitations on the web platform, although for MIDI devices, there is the Web MIDI API.

          But before going there, I'll have to work a lot on the musical and visuals parts of the game...