Scratch

This was already my favorite - you've made it even better    .

Jens wrote:

A new 'conductor' makes sure that all variations of jazzy and romantic sequences in combination with waltz and swing rhythms get played. ...Of course, you can still control everything yourself.

It wasn't obvious to me how you can tell what type of rhythm you are setting, but maybe I'm missing something obvious.  A great example of why a capability to add comments to the code would be nice.

Jens wrote:

promise not to fool around with it any more (at least, until I get some new ideas ;-) .

In the unlikely event    you don't come up with your own new ideas, the ability to input a non-random chord progression (like Easy Music Composer) would be nice. 

Adding a drum track would also be interesting - didn't realize there wasn't one when I wrote my earlier message -  and spent some time searching the text version of the code for "drum" (it is nice to have the text version available).

contrary to my above stated intention I just now added the feature to edit your own non-random chord progression.

Also, since this gradually makes 'Combo' something other than just a random music script I have made another project out of it, called 'Composer':
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Jens/26212

Martin, I'm still in the process of fine-tuning the existing code, thus there will be (sooner or later) some improvements and variations concerning scales (e.g. the current minor scale is just an -3 offset major scale) and melody-algos (right now it's just up and down the ladder). Also, I'm planning to allow a lot more types of functional harmonic chords than now. Already composer/combo 'knows' a lot more chords than are used in the composer-mode.

If you're after some theory, you might check some wikipedia entries about harmony and functional harmony, although those informations aren't very understandable and only of limited use for someone who is actually trying to write software about it.

As far as examples and hard-coded melodies are concernded I've briefly considered doing something like it, but then decided against it, because of Scratch's complete lack of collections and file I/O. Instead I would have to kludge around with screen storage, and that's frankly not what I'm after.

I am, however, planning to extent the puzzle-analogy a lot further in the future. I would like to be able to have more 'block' types, and to actually drag them around and stick them together freely. Block types would not be restricted to chord functions but also to melody blocks and such. Again, due to Scratch's (current) inability to create classes, complex data types, or to merely dynamically create new sprites, I'm not sure if it makes sense to put a lot of effort into such enhancements....

It's quite easy to add other melody instruments, and I have some versions with a lot more... Also, I have created other instruments with different melody patterns and made exported sprites of them. It's quite fun. The best starting point is to take the vibraphone and remove all the 'diatonic' stuff, leaving just the 'harmonic' notes to be triggered. Then you can clone the result with stunning effects... Again, it would be nice, if Scratch supported dynamical sprite generation.....

Thanks for your supportive comments and inspiring suggestions!

MartinWollenweber wrote:

There could be some other melody-instruments

Martin, I just posted a new project featuring exta instruments for 'Combo' and 'Composer':

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Jens/27996

You can export each instrument as sprite and import it into your own Combo version. These three additional instruments have algorithms that plug right into the harmony engine used by Combo and Composer, but are just a *little* different, so you might fool around and play with various instrument settings...