Early Downhome Blues

About This App

This interactive tool generates melodies using the pitch transition network from Jeff Todd Titon's Early Downhome Blues: A Musical and Cultural Analysis (Figure 64), combined with weighted selection rules that follow traditional blues phrasing and contour.

How to Use

• Next generates the next note using weighted selection — or just press Space
• Click notes on the staff or in Paths to choose specific notes
• History — Click any past note to rewind to that point
• Score — View your melody as notation; export to LilyPond, MusicXML, or PDF
• Chords — Click chord names I, IV, V (or press 1, 4, 5) to play chords. Check "Inflect" to bend chord pitches toward the melody
• MIDI — Send notes to external instruments (set your synth to ±4 semitones pitch bend). MPE is recommended for chord output, also with ±4 PB range

Phrasing

• On: The tree shows your position in the song hierarchy — two phrases per line, three lines per stanza, and as many stanzas as you like.
• Off: Free-form mode — generate notes indefinitely without phrase structure.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Sound Samples

• Piano: Salamander Grand Piano by Alexander Holm (CC BY 3.0)
• Cello: tonejs-instruments by Nicholaus P. Brosowsky

Reference

Titon, Jeff Todd. Early Downhome Blues: A Musical and Cultural Analysis. 2nd ed., University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

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