Pattern Play

This paper presents a progress report on a system to facilitate the manipulation of structure in music. Its purpose is to serve as an infra-structure for exploring music in terms of its inherent pattern structure, providing a platform for further research into the perceptibility of musical pattern. It is also intended as a framework for composition and, ultimately, as a performable instrument. Structure is represented in terms of patterns extracted from features, which may then be rearranged via a graphical and gestural user interface. Aspects from a given passage of music can be imposed upon, and mixed with, other sections of music. There is also the facility to capture expressive gestural user input: both for immediate generation of phrases and for imposing phrasing interpretation onto passages.