I've developed a process to transmute text into music.  Each letter of text is assigned a note which creates a melody line and chords are built by stacking notes assigned to the letters of a word.  Rest lengths are assigned to spaces, grammatical signs, and some other ways.  There is no room for subjectiveness, except for the speed of the tempo, which, so far, seemes to be at the discretion of the person transmuting the text.  This began about a month ago when a member of another forum suggested I try expressing my Word Stack study (www.globallablog.com) as music.  This got me to thinking in a wider scope of any text.

The music you are hearing is transmuted from the first two paragraphs of of the Torah (which is the first five books of Moses: Genesis, Leviticus, Dueteronomy, Exodus, Numbers).  I'm using a freeware called Finale Note Pad to write notation, and the program plays the music too.  It's exciting because the finished product is left up to the text, which you don't hear until after a perfect transmutation is written and then you press the play button.  The text below, the first two paragraph of Genesis, is what you are hearing.  I cut some of the song off at the end because it's just some melody without chords underneath.  More chords will fill up the space when I transmute the third paragraph of Genesis.  

Transmuted text:

TORAH

GENESIS

When God began to create heaven and earth -- the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water -- God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.  God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.  And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.

God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water.”  God made the expanse, and it separated the water which was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse.  And it was so.  God called the expanse Sky.  And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

P.s. If you would like to add an ambient track to be a backdrop for the piano line, please let me know, and we can work something out.

Nevermind the musical aspect,this is sheer creativity at its maximum.I think this is amazing. I really did enjoy the musical part of it.I'm still not sure how it all comes together.How do the letters determine the speed and how does it choose the note?I guess the question is : Is it self assigned or are you choosing the notes and the time between them!           ?????

Hey, Marino!  Thanks for the compliment. I re-edited my post to include how time is chosen.  I don't want to get into it too deeply here.  I plan on writing software that'll translate text to music to speed things up.

yup you have gone and created the way all humans will communicate in the future.. no longer will spoken words be used but musical style melodies and sounds.... Close Encounters  stuff going on here ...


very very inventive and thought provoking.. some of the lines made some very tasty note salad.

Have you heard of Cornelius Cardew?

Heres an article by him:
http://www.ubu.com/papers/cardew_ethics.html

He developed a musical notation based on images first:
http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/picturesofmusic/pages/anim.html

And then text:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0027-4666(196706)108%3A1492%3C527%3ASTTM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5

The diference between your system and his (if you can call it that) is that he didn't want to determinate the relation between the notation and the music that was to be played.  The artist had to interpretate the symbols.  It's all about a theory of improvisation:  traditional written music leads always to the future, he says, free improvisation stays on the present, on the transcience of the moment.

I found it very interesting... i hope you'll do too.

I have never heard of the method that your using to create your music......If you have created this the way you have...thern there are no bounds to what you can achieve...keep going

Flyer

will rate

Very cool stuff.   I have seen musicians form a musical phrase based on letters of words or a number  (ie. telephone number) and then improvise on the phrase but I have never heard anything like this before. 

I heard an news article on the radio some time back where someone at a museum had hooked a number of computers up to the internet and they monitored the web searches being done on line.  The key words that were used in the searches were then tabulated to determine the most common words being searched at any given time.  These words were then visually projected onto the walls, floor, and ceiling of the studio and generated via a sound system into the room too.  Entering the studio one would see and hear these words.  It sounded very stream of consciousness for humanity in real time. 

I thought that was very interesting, but if you turn the words into music it would add a whole new dimmension to the exhibit.

I like this a lot, the whole idea of it is amazing and the actual random chaos like piano has a beauty in its madness.
So you actually write the program that produces the notation? Otherwise where is the 'musicianship' in it? Who decides what a 'letter' or 'word' sound like?
Please post some more, I love things like this, it's totally interesting.

Is this now the 'first' short song with a new name or the second 'longer' version but with the same name as the first one ??? 

There's an old vst plugin floating around that can change bitmaps into sounds, I used it a few times but it is also limited unless you suss out how to make 'the right picture' for the sound your looking for.

WOW!!!!!

This is awesome!!!!!

I don't know if anyone ever created a program to do this before!!!!

bi - lateral thinking

music is the organization of sound ------- and this is an amazing way to organize it

I totally applaud your dedication to work through the assimilation of words/letters to sound and the creation of a program to do it.........

it seems that the pitch organization in the program currently restricts the overall 'pitch width' of any replay using the program ie its confined to the tones proscribed by the alphabet.........therefore there is a honing in on certain tones that i can only assume to be the vowels aeiou ......... perhaps these could be ascribed to different out of range tones or even instruments via midi control .............

YOU REALLY HAVE SOMETHING HERE
PROBABLY NOT 2 EVERY ONES TASTE BUT I FOR 1 LOVE IT!!!!!

Swordfish

http://forum.bandamp.com/Audio_Review/1081.html

very different..so you have now processed an experiment.. I can imagine in years to come a musical dictionary...its got potential. x I can imagine also..this working for the blind people..they receive some documentation and hear it instead of read it..anyhows.. the mind is on the road to the future.. i reckon this is a money maker.. endless possibilities..well done.. brill!! rated..xxx

witchy : I cant for the life of me remember the name of the vst plugin I used all those years ago. I made a search and came up with this at least, to give you an idea :
"Cameleon also allows you to import image (BMP) files and turn them
into sounds. This offers an extremely powerful way to design never
heard before sounds, and if you're ever stuck for inspiration, just
try loading up any picture - perhaps a picture of your mum!"
Comes from http://softwarebackups.org/index.php?target=desc&progid=6218 and it's about http://www.camelaudio.com

Wait.....Yes found it : http://www.sonicspot.com/coagula/coagula.html
And it's free, it's a vst plugin so it works in any vst host: cubase , fl etc

I also came across an instrument that worked on the principal of three random dots ping-ponging around a box, a bit like the one posted a while back in the pit.

All ideas to be toyed with on a project like this I suppose.

Does Swordy not mean that your vowels, having been set to a certain tone will simply come back in the resulting piece of music the whole time keeping it on / within certain tones / limits.
It's what makes it sound mad, the returning to certain notes.
Like letters within speech, they are not always pronounced the same, I don't mean accents but like e as in everything and e as in evening and a as in apple and a as in able ! lol
One letter is defined by many different rules, element and aspects. Would you be writing such conditions into each letter?
So would the 'musician' choose the mood for their text input ? could they also not set a rhythm of sorts or does that depend on line breaks ?
WoW! Mad subject!
The more I think of this though the more I feel your just trying to recreate speech ! lol
But do keep us informed though. 

toastedgoat: As a witness of five UFO type encounters in my life, your compliment was well-received... kinda made me chuckle too.  Thanks!  Check out my Word Stack study on my web site (www.globallablog.com) to read up on quasi-communicational/informational storage organizational processes.

aetheris: No I haven't... thanks for the links.

FLYER7747: As far as I'm aware, it's all my own.  Thanks for the encouragement.

pianorph: Never heard of that experiment.  I'll have to find it online and contact the creators of it.  Merging my process with theirs could only enhance.  I'll give you credit if anything should happen.

kings: I'm using Finale Note Pad 2008 (upgrading to PrintMusic) to write the notation, but I'm transmuting the letters into notes by hand right now.  I plan to write a program that will transform letters into the assigned pitches automatically.  The program will also store common words/phrase so less typing needs to be done.  All-in-all, I'd like the program to be able to place notes on a stave and play them back too, and save in midi format.  This'll take some time though, and I'm continuing college in Computer Science to specialize in programming, which will assist me in my goal.  There's actually no real musicianmanship actually taking place on my part, except for the structuring of the process that allows notes to be defined and the creation of the score.  I've mainly created a conduit for anyone who wants to make a song (anyone)... all they have to do is translate text (my program will actually do all the work).  I guess a-little more musicianmanship could be attributed to a person if they originate text (like their own poem, story, etc.).  Also, the bitmap thing is interesting too... not sure exactly what you're refering to... maybe you can elaborate?

swordfish: Fist off, thanks for your link to your song.  I've listened to it on repeat as I typed this whole reply.  Very relaxing.  The vowel aspect of your reply is not resonating with me.  The vowels transmute just as consonants do.  Would you define what you mean more clearly, please?  Thanks for your compliments.

paganscradle: You've nailed it!  I didn't even think about this as a use.  I was just happy enough thinking of the effect of text-to-music and its mysteriousness.  But you've gone and opened up a whole new field.  For the blind!  Awesome idea!  toastedgoat should be given credit for speaking about its new-use probabilities generally, though.  If the mind, which I'm sure it could be, is trained to identify a note/chord-sound with a letter/letters, then text can be heard instead of read, without a spoken word... hah, awesome!  Although, the spoken word should never be left in the past.

kings (#11): Thanks for the references.  I'll definitely have to check out Cameleon.  As far as pronunciation of letters, I have not decided to include that... for one, there are so many dialects that to pinpoint a rule would be difficult.  For now rhythm is determined by certain grammatical rules to determine note length and rest length.  I've determined that 4/4 timing is to be used in all pieces.  Why?  Because it's most common and it has proven thus far to not impose difficulty.