Digital Debussy A Hardware-Based Music Composition Tool

Music composition programs are powerful tools for beginning musicians and experienced professionals; however, most of these programs are expensive and in some cases cost hundreds of dollars. While this may be a worthwhile investment for serious musicians, most amateurs do not require the powerful features and tools of professional music composition software. Our goal is to develop a cost-effective, hardware based music composition platform that is easy to use for musicians of all ages and skill levels. Our secondary goal is to include expansion capability to potentially include additional features time permitting. The main feature of our project is the music writing and playback system. A user will have the ability to input a melody using a graphical representation of sheet music and toolbar to adjust a variety options, such as note duration; he or she will be able to playback the melody through the Labkit speakers. Our goals were to utilize existing sound files that represent various instruments so the user can customize his or her music further. We also planned to implement a control system for the tempo of the music so a user can speed up or slow down his or her music.