17.3 MB

Interactive Graphic Score & Serial Music Generator. POINTILLISME is a browser-based generative quartet built entirely with the Web Audio API — a single self-contained HTML file, no installation, no dependencies.

Four independent oscillators function as four voices in a serial ensemble. Each voice runs seven independent series that advance at their own pace: pitch (cycling through all 48 row forms — Prime, Inversion, Retrograde, Retrograde-Inversion, each at 12 transpositions), register, duration, dynamics, envelope (ADSR), spatial position (stereo pan), and ornament. Because the series lengths are coprime, the global combination does not repeat for millions of events — an arithmetic property that produces the absence of repetition and hierarchical landmarks characteristic of integral serialism, not as an imposed rule but as an emergent consequence of the system itself.

The ornament series draws from ten types rooted in traditional and extended technique: trill, mordent, gruppetto, appoggiatura, acciaccatura, glissando, tremolo, arpeggio, cluster, or none. Each ornament is rendered both in sound and as a graphic glyph on the scrolling score.

The visual output is a graphic score in the tradition of Stockhausen’s Studie II and Earle Brown’s coordinate notation: time flows horizontally, frequency vertically, each event is drawn as an envelope-shaped figure whose width is its duration, height its dynamics, and profile its ADSR contour. The four voices are distinguished by colour (sanguine, ultramarine, green earth, ochre) and by texture (smooth fill for sine, horizontal hatching for triangle, serrated edge for sawtooth, vertical striations for square). Ornament glyphs appear above or beside each event using conventional notation symbols.

Compose with it
Press play and POINTILLISME generates a continuous, non-repeating serial texture. Each voice has its own waveform selector (sine, triangle, sawtooth, square) and can be independently re-seeded or muted (tacet). The base time unit controls the pace of the generative process.

When you hear material you want to keep, press record. The instrument captures the full stereo output and all note events simultaneously. When you stop recording, two export buttons appear:
– Save audio — WAV or AIFF, 16-bit or 24-bit, at your system’s native sample rate (typically 48 kHz). Ready to drop into any DAW.
– Save MIDI — a Standard MIDI File (Type 1) with four separate tracks, one per voice (OSC I through OSC IV), each on its own MIDI channel. Drag this into Ableton Live, Logic, Reaper, or any other DAW and each voice arrives on its own track. From there, you can assign your own instruments, edit individual notes, transpose voices, or use the serial material as a compositional skeleton for an entirely new piece. All ornament events (trill alternations, glissando steps, arpeggio tones, cluster notes) are written as discrete MIDI events, so nothing is lost in translation.

Perform with it
The freeze function (button or F key) stops time: the score halts, every event visible at that moment stays exactly where it is, and the canvas becomes interactive. Click any event and it plays — with its original waveform, envelope, ornament, and pan position. This turns POINTILLISME into a live instrument: you freeze a moment, explore its sonic content by clicking individual events in any order you choose, then unfreeze to let the generation continue. In a live performance context, alternating between generative flow and frozen, manually-triggered gestures creates a natural dialogue between algorithmic process and human decision.

Technical details
– Single self-contained HTML file — works in any modern browser, no server required
– Pure vanilla javascript and Web Audio API — zero external dependencies
– WAV encoder: PCM, little-endian, 16/24-bit
– AIFF encoder: PCM, big-endian, 80-bit extended sample rate field, 16/24-bit
– MIDI encoder: Standard MIDI File Type 1, 480 ticks/beat, conductor track + 4 voice tracks
– Stereo output with per-voice panning (serialized azimuth parameter)

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POINTILLISME  ( 17 MB )