A Distributed Interactive Music Application using Harmonic Constraint

Abstract

We describe a novel and intuitive interactive application for musical performance. This application, called the Pazellian, provides an easy way for users to control musical performance aspects such as dynamics and articulation, instrumentation, and the actual pitches being played. Users interact with the music via simple gestures on a graphical user interface. “Smart Harmony” technology harmonically constrains the pitches played, allowing even users with no musical training to obtain musically sensible results. The application is distributed, allowing multiple users to perform or control different instruments together. This paper discusses the Pazellian’s functionality and design. We further describe novel features such as aural highlighting and soloing, along with issues and solutions concerning its distributed architecture.