A form of machine translation,
the MAM is used by teachers and people who would like to learn to play
music, but could never really understand or grasp the traditional music
scale. This is how to interpret the machine's output. Your place in the
piece is indicated by the note that is lit as the music scrolls across
the page. Duration of the note is indicated by the length of the colored
bar. Pitch is shown by the positioning of the bar along the vertical,
and the horizontal meaning deals with the note in relation to the other
notes. Color is important since
it is incorporating the ideas of
dissonance/consonance, modulation, and other characteristics of each note
that is not necessarily readable in conventional music notation.
Beethoven's 5th Symphony as interpreted on the Music Animation Machine ( first 5 secs.)
