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Re: PGN (Chess) to MIDI

by hsmyers (Canon)
on Feb 19, 2005 at 05:50 UTC ( [id://432650]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to PGN (Chess) to MIDI

You know, I've translated PGN into just about everything but I've got to tell you it never occured to me to translate it into MIDI. I've done fractals into MIDI and brownian motion into MIDI, but not PGN! ++To you gryphon for a totally unexpected direction in chess software!! Would you mind if I added it to Chess::PGN::Filter? While this might be a little bit on the Acme side, it's cool enough to give a kick to users old and new.

--hsm

"Never try to teach a pig to sing...it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."

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Re^2: PGN (Chess) to MIDI
by gryphon (Abbot) on Feb 21, 2005 at 04:38 UTC

    Greetings hsmyers,

    Sure, go ahead and add it to Chess::PGN::Filter. Thing is, though, I think what I've come up with is only a very minimal, thrown together idea. All I did was assign a simple one-to-one map of notation-to-note. Even with this very basic map, the musical patterns are obvious. The patterns I've been hearing in some games definately justify spending time expanding the conversion process.

    Right now, each primary piece (/KQBNR/) has a unique tone, but it's hard to tell each of them apart. And there's no distinguishment between white pieces and black pieces. I think a "better" musical scheme would be to have some way to audiably know which capital piece was being moved and by which side. I think such a scheme might require multiple notes to help audiably identify capitals. Also, and more interesting, is dynamics. I think a Qa2-f7 should be louder than a Qa2-c4, and the c4 move should be louder than a2-a4. Already a checking move and a castle are easily distinguishable, but that's about it.

    A fun experiment is taking several games between the same two players and setting the tempo very, very fast.

    gryphon
    code('Perl') || die;

      Excellant! If I add it, it gives it a friendly place to live and as you develope same, we can just continue the version thing. It might also get me to get back into things like various conversions (english to algebraic for instance) at any rate it seems like an interesting piece of reasearch. Have you thought about black using a minor key with white playing a compatible major? Tempo on forced moves could be automagically distinguished from otherwise and similar such. Lots of canvas, room for much embroidery!!

      --hsm

      "Never try to teach a pig to sing...it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."
      Right now, each primary piece (/KQBNR/) has a unique tone, but it's hard to tell each of them apart. And there's no distinguishment between white pieces and black pieces. I think a "better" musical scheme would be to have some way to audiably know which capital piece was being moved and by which side.

      Maybe a different instrument for each piece, and a different octave for each player? 8 notes to an octave, and the board is 8x8... So, for example, an opening move of b1-c3 could be four notes (octave 1, note 2; o2,n1; o1,n3; o2,n3) of a flute, while black's first move might be d7-d5 (o3,n4; o4,n7; o3,n4; o4,n5) played on a pennywhistle. Or some such.
      x-axis, white = octave 1, notes 1-8
      y-axis, white = octave 2, notes 1-8
      x-axis, black = octave 3, notes 1-8
      y-axis, black = octave 4, notes 1-8
      pawn = pennywhistle
      rook = tuba
      knight = flute
      bishop = harpsichord
      queen = mandolin
      king = trumpet


      --
      Linux, sci-fi, and Nat Torkington, all at Penguicon 3.0
      perl -e 'print(map(chr,(0x4a,0x41,0x50,0x48,0xa)))'
Re^2: PGN (Chess) to MIDI
by fraktalisman (Hermit) on Feb 23, 2005 at 18:18 UTC

    The real challenge here is to translate it into a musical form that anybody would actually listen to. There are (nowadays lots of) tools that make graphics out of sound (like CTHUGHA), and there it also depends on the parameters.

    Why not add some pseudo-random stuff or even some melodic or harmonic stuff from a database, which has to be discarded in case someone wants to decode the original information, but which would make the whole track sound better. Like in J.S. Bach's time there was a vivid scene of musical improvisation, they just noted noted some single notes or numbers which were then performed in a more elaborate way, quite similar to modern guitar notations in songbooks. But then it must be done in a way that the 'naked' melody (i.e. information) is still recognizable. I'm not a musician, and no radio specialist either. Is it really possible? If not, why not?


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