Poetry to Music

Daniel D. Johnson — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 04:30:28 GMT

This is a program I wrote to explore the connection between the patterns in poetry and speeches and the patterns in music. Unfortunately, I cannot upload it here (the WebMIDI API integration does not seem to work anymore and also it was built with a very specific soundfont so viewing it elsewhere would not be equivalent), so instead of the actual program you can watch a video of it.

The program, written in Javascript and utilizingthe WebMIDI API, first runs through the poem and extracts phonemes using the excellent Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary. It then links together words that share phonemes, assigning each pair a strength depending on the number of matched phonemes (plus a bonus if the words are identical). Finally, it begins to play the poem syllable-by-syllable, assigning each word a note based on its first letter. When the playhead reaches a word that has links to other words, it creates a secondary playhead that plays the matched word simultaneously, producing temporary chords and repetition that die off over time.

In this video, the program is playing its rendition of "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe.

Daniel D. Johnson (Posts about poetry)

Poetry to Music