Markov Chain Study

For our study of Markov Chains, Sohaila, Jingxi, and I created a robotic “music box” that sings lyrics generated by any text that the user enters.

We were influenced by the looping effect of the music video for Kerela by Bonobo, where every loop progresses the timeline very slightly.

In our program there is a four-word loop that removes the first word and adds one word to the end every repetition. In this way a slowly progressing song is created, backed by a rhythm and chords.

Try it out or view the source.

There’s plenty we talked about adding: the ability to control the different musical elements so that you can create your own song, controls over tempo and loop length, as well as more generative musical elements to make the song more varied.

In terms of visuals, we discussed using the number of options for each successive word to influence the colors and shapes on the screen. Then you could get a sense of how common the different words are in relation to the text. This could even be used to influence the music.