Eventide has posted a fantastic archival video in advance of their remake of Music Mouse. In this 1987 episode of Midnight Muse, composer and programmer Laurie Spiegel explains the software and takes call-in questions. “Even if we’re very good at the keyboard, sometimes we want our habits broken up,” she says, and “[this] allows you to push melodic lines around in space.”
Here she is showing off her original application, as she wrote in C on the Macintosh:
It’s also worth reading the note that accompanied the software at release in 1986 — even beyond Music Mouse itself, it raises deep questions about what an “intelligent instrument” is, and what the role of the computer in music creativity might be:
Preface to Music Mouse – An Intelligent Instrument
This program differs from other music programs currently available for small computers in that it is not designed for the storage, editing, and replay of musical compositions using keyboards or involving notation. Instead, it turns the computer itself into a musical instrument which you can play.
Unlike traditional musical instruments, however, Music Mouse doesn’t require years of practice, or knowledge of music theory or notation. It has a variety of options built into it for harmony and melodic patterning, freeing its player to focus on the movement of melodic lines, the shape and density of their elaboration, their electronic “orchestration”, and on the overall form and expressive content of the music itself.Up to this time, of the new powers which computers bring to music, commercially available music software has focused mainly on precision and memory. These are wonderful attributes, but one of the computer’s greatest strengths remains barely touched. Logic, the computer’s ability to learn and to simulate aspects of our own human intelligence, lets the computer grow into an actively participating extension of a musical person, rather than just another tape recorder or piece of erasable
I firmly believe that logic, when used well, does not conflict with intuition, emotion, or other aspects of music which are often considered contrary to it. Rather than constraining musicality, logical structures can serve to support, extend, and amplify our ability to express and embody the undefinable qualities of aesthetic meaning which we are forever trying to capture.This is a very exciting time for music. With the advent of computers, many of music’s past restrictions can begin to fall away, so that it becomes possible for more people to make more satisfying music, more enjoyably and easily, regardless of physical coordination or theoretical study, of keyboard skills or fluency with notation. This doesn’t imply a dilution of musical quality. On the contrary, it frees us to go further, and raises the base-level at which music making begins. It lets us focus more clearly on aesthetic content, on feeling and movement in sound, on the density or direction of experience, on sensuality, structure, and shape — so that we can concentrate better on what each of us loves in music that lies beyond the low level of how to make notes, at which music making far too often bogs down.
This simple program hopes to provide an introduction to the vast and still-barely-explored realm of musical intelligence in software, which will doubtless include possibilities beyond anything we conceive of now. For those who have wanted to do music but have lacked the background, computer intelligence may make it possible. For those of us who have already gone a long way in music, it may let us go further than we ever imagined before. This program is a small beginning, written to some extent as a pointer.
Laurie Spiegel
New York City, 1986
Eventide, we’re all eagerly looking forward to this! Previously: