Markov Chains

Welsh folk songs
Computer games
Markov Order: 5
BPM: 140

Marvok chains use probability to predict stuff. Using probability can sometimes get pretty wild results, so Marvok chains try and tame things by basing the likelihood of a particular event happening next on the current event thats happening now. In a musical context, the algorithm could analyse a set of songs and calculate the probability of any particular note or phrase following another in those songs.

In practice, this means that Markov chains can generate music in a similar style to that its been trained with. But whats that 'markov order' slider doing over there - how does that affect the output? And if this generates music in a similar style to its inputs, what happens when you mix up the genres?

Instructions

  1. Choose the songs that will be used as inputs (you can preview the songs if you want to hear how they sound).
  2. Set the Order, and see what it does (hint: higher order chains will consider longer phrases from the input songs).
  3. To keep things under control (especially when mixing genres), you can keep everything aligned to a key and scale.
  4. Generate music!