Serial Composer is a simple application that searches series that fulfill certain criteria. It might be useful for a composer of modern classical music (or serial music) who wants to find a new fancy series.
Requirements!
A PPC with appearance extension is required.
How to use it?
Using Serial Composer shouldn’t be tricky. Open up a new window, select the properties you want your series to have and do the search. If you are lucky enough you should very soon see the window full of fancy series.
Features?
There aren’t very many. Besides the search criteria you can you can choose whether to use flats or sharps and the search depth. What is “search depth”? Serial Composer uses a recursive algorithm to find series candidates and search depth defines how deep that recursion will be. In other words, it defines how many of the notes in the seed can be changed. Selecting 11 means that all 39916800 possible series will be tested (except their transpositions). In addition you can choose the seed, that is, the series, from which the recursion algorithm will start.
What you see?
Serial Composer shows only maximum of 100 found series. If you feel that's not enough, please let me know, but remember, that showing all found series could lead to instant need of about 2 Gigs of free memory!
Warning!
Serial Composer isn’t very smart! Be wise when selecting search criteria. If you click “Avoid minor thirds” and then click “Avoid major triads” Serial Composer will be performing duplicate search – and in vain.
No more search criteria?
With the new search criteria introduced in version 1.1 you could even find something interesting. Still, more features are coming, but you have the possibility to suggest fancy search criteria. For example that the series has to have all intervals or to be a retroinversion of itself. And so on. Feel free to give feedback.
Bugs?
Certainly there are many left. Again, feedback is welcome.
Contacting the author:
Tuukka Ilomäki
ilomaki@cc.helsinki.fi
http://www.helsinki.fi/~ilomaki/sc/
Disclaimer:
YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE SOFTWARE MAY NOT SATISFY YOUR REQUIREMENTS OR BE FREE FROM DEFECTS. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, AND THE AUTHOR EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
THE AUTHOR WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT OR SPECIAL DAMAGES, WHETHER ARISING IN TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), CONTRACT OR OTHERWISE, THAT STEM FROM ANY USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE.
