The Art, Joy and Power of Creating Musical Programs

What would you create if you could easily write programs that make music? In this session, we will explore innovative programs that use music to create new sensory experiences and change the way we interact with the world: musical scores based on classic novels, soundtracks built from moves in chess tournaments, soundscapes created as software logs provide status updates, and more. These programs are being written by people around the world who have discovered the joy of musical programs. Next, we will learn how to create musical programs using JFugue, an open-source API for Java and other Java Virtual Machine (JVM) languages. Just as tools like Processing have made graphic programming available to the masses, JFugue makes it easy for anyone with programming experience to create musical programs. Finally, we will take some DNA sequences, dip into music theory, and create the beginning of a DNA-based music generator that serves as a guide and inspiration for your own project work.