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Creative Sounds Improviser

Improvisation Software

Article from Sound On Sound, April 1992

Auto-accompaniment software seems to be growing up, offering real interaction and creativity in place of tacky preset patterns. Martin Russ looks at Improviser, an ST program that does just what its name suggests.



Software programmers seem to have been in a creative mood recently. Auto-accompaniment generators like Band-in-a-Box and Freestyle have shown that you can use a computer to generate quite sophisticated backing tracks, and both Fractal Music Composer and Fractal Music exploit the infinite variety of iterated mathematical formulae to generate structured non-random music. Just about the only area of musical performance that you thought was safe may also now be under assault — soloing!

Creative Sounds' Improviser program (developed over the last couple of years by Paul Hodgson, a professional, improvising, saxophonist from Bristol) does exactly what its name suggests. You give it a MIDI File containing four tracks — Bass, Drums, Harmony and Melody — and it will create an improvised part from the musical information in the file. All you need is yourself, a multi-timbral MIDI sound source, and the computer. The process of producing an 'improvised' part is an interaction between the program and the user — you need to manipulate the real-time controls much as you would with a real instrument to get the best results. In fact, many of the same principles apply to Improviser as to a real instrument. This is not an 'instant results' program — the improvisations get better as you become accustomed to the way that the controls and program work, and as you acquire skill in using the controls.

The main screen is deliberately and deceptively simple, with large, clear buttons and sliders, arranged in five main areas. The most important controls are probably the 'Start' and 'Stop' buttons, which control the playback of the MIDI File. The Sliders box contains five sliders: the two on the left control the volume of the improvised part and the overall playback tempo, whilst the centre slider controls the 'feel' of the improvised part by altering its timing relative to the other tracks. The two sliders on the right control the note content of the improvisation: one controls the Chromatic content, whilst the other alters the Melodic Content. Pressing the 'Melody' button overrides the improvisation and replaces it with the unaltered melody part from your original sequence: the equivalent of 100% Melodic content. Conversely, when the Melodic Content is set to zero there will be few, if any, melody notes in the improvisation. The Chromatic Content slider determines just how the improvisation plays the notes inbetween the notes in the melody. Balancing the 'mix' of these two sliders determines how close the improvisation is to the original, or how musical it is. With both sliders set to zero, the results are very avant-garde!

Six boxes containing note symbols form the Tempo box, and provide control over how long are the basic notes (or rests) in the improvisation. The Patterns box provides variation on the fixed length notes by offering 16 melodic or rhythmic patterns, based on common forms used in improvisation. Melodic pattern number 01 is a rising arpeggio, for example. The melodic patterns follow the chord changes in the MIDI File, although by using the Same Chord button in the remaining box you can fix a particular transposition. The Same Note button forces the improvisation to repeat the same note, whilst the Transpose control lets you control the transposition of the improvised part. The Chromatic button forces 100% Chromatic content. You are not restricted to just the preset melodic and rhythmic patterns; pressing the Random Pattern buttons randomly chooses from any of 16 million possible patterns, whilst the Seed button can be used to choose a new set of random numbers for the pattern generator.

There are four pull-down menus. The file menu deals with loading MIDI Files and saving Format 1 MIDI Files of the improvisation (recorded whenever you press the Start button), as well as the 'snapshot' screen settings files. The Tracks menu controls the playback of the parts, whilst the MIDI menu determines the MIDI Channel and Patch Number associated with the parts. The Drums menu allows remapping to either MT32 Roland standard drums or Ml drum sounds.

The improvised part can be anything — you can generate walking bass lines or drum patterns just as easily as solo lead lines by turning off the relevant track and setting the improvised part's MIDI Channel to replace it. Interacting with the program involves making decisions about what the improvisation should play next based on what it has already played. The real time control lets you alter the timing, rhythmic pattern or melodic pattern, fix a chord, play the same note or even stop improvising and insert part of the melody, all whilst the program is still generating the improvisation. Improviser is thus best considered as a performance instrument that uses the computer as its user interface.

The top line shows the start of a Mozart melody. Underneath is the result of improvising using 100% Chromatic Content and quaver timing. The bottom line is an improvisation with about 50% Melodic and 50% Chromatic Content with minim timing.


In a world where much of the effort that people put into playing music is confined to attempting to recreate other people's musical performances, Improviser reveals an alternative approach. Acquiring the skill to be able to improvise on most instruments is normally a time-consuming and exacting process, but Improviser puts the technical fluency to one side and allows you to get directly at the higher structural control — this makes it ideal for learning about many of the aspects of creating music that normally get lost in the fine detail of actually producing the right note in the correct way. The educational uses are obvious — you don't need the ability to play saxophone to play around with sax solos, and you can learn a lot about the way that music is put together just by playing with the melodic and rhythmic patterns on a fixed chord (Improviser prefers more than three notes in the chords used for the Harmony track, since this gives it more information on how to harmonise). On a higher level, you could use Improviser as a composing tool, since it can provide new and different ideas to explore further, thereby avoiding personal cliches in melody or bass lines.

I said that the user interface was deliberately simple, and in this way it seems to echo the minimalistic approach that is found on most real instruments. Imagine what a recorder would look like if it was invented tomorrow — all those holes would need clear or perhaps embossed labels, and covering them with your fingers is far too difficult for live performance. All that spittle running down the inside suggests that some sort of foot controlled air pump would be a more suitable alternative to actually blowing, and... For this reason, Improviser stays well away from complex graphical displays of things like the patterns, and refers to them by number alone — you can hear the musical effect, so why clutter things up? As a result, Improviser is easy to use, and doesn't take too long to master, which is probably what most improvising musicians wish their instruments were like.

I found only a couple of minor problems with the initial V1.0 release of Improviser, one of which — related to the transmission of program change messages — was fixed by an update that I received just as I wrote the review. The second problem only happens with some MIDI Files: long continuous use with the Same Chord button activated can cause it to stop playback suddenly. The program has not crashed, because you can re-start the improvisation process again and continue. I told Creative Sounds about this and they are investigating. The manual is nicely ring-bound and comes in an unusual clear sleeve, but I would have preferred a little more detail than the 32 A5 pages provide.

Improviser is a tool for exploring the basis of improvisation using a modal approach. The program helped me to produce some interesting bass lines and melody ideas without the steep learning curve that many ST music programs have. It also showed me that I was just as capable of making it produce garbage! Intriguing in many ways, Improviser repays careful exploration and perseverance.

Further information

Creative Sounds Improviser £99.50 (inc VAT, and P&P)

Creative Sounds, (Contact Details).


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Retro-Sampling

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In The Studio With Soul II Soul


Publisher: Sound On Sound - SOS Publications Ltd.
The contents of this magazine are re-published here with the kind permission of SOS Publications Ltd.


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Sound On Sound - Apr 1992

Review by Martin Russ

Previous article in this issue:

> Retro-Sampling

Next article in this issue:

> In The Studio With Soul II S...


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