Inspired by both the MirrorFugue research of Xiao Xiao and the various explorations by Vi Hart into everything from mathemusical palindromic canons to candy button musical instrumentals, today I decided to create a virtual machine to help you compose musical palindromes.
In particular, I thought it would be an interesting constraint to incorporate elements of time reversal (eg: palindromes), instruments controlled by scores on paper tape, and candy buttons. Putting this all together, I ended up with a virtual player piano controlled by two copies of a candy button strip. The two strips get played together in reverse order to create a palindromic score.
Since these are virtual candy buttons, I took the liberty of expanding on the three classic flavors of cherry, lemon and lime, replacing them with a full palette consisting of, respectively, cherry, peach, orange, lemon, lime, blueberry, plum and raspberry. It turns out that when you bring these particular eight flavors into the virtual world, each one corresponds exactly to a note on the musical scale. Which makes them very easy to work with in making musical scores.
In addition to being incredibly delicious.
Hi Ken, I saw you speak last week when Cynthia Allen brought us to your lab, and I think your work is fantastic. It is fabulously creative, and your demonstrations were engaging and entertaining. Thank you for giving us a sneak peak of this project!
Lindsay, thank you so much for that lovely and encouraging thought! -Ken