Pros
1. Quick way to create some melody and rhythm ideas.
2. Clean, simple interface.
3. Plenty of adjustments are available to the position and zoom within the fractal set, which gives you potentially billions of different note sequences.
4. You can create from one up to five simultaneous fractal note sequences, assigning each to a different MIDI instrument. This gives a maximum of 5-note polyphony.
5. Each of the five voices can use its own copy of the fractal set, quite independent of all the others.
6. MIDI controllers let you change the output sounds dramatically; try Modulation, Expression and Pitch bend.
7. After assigning instruments to each voice, tweaking position and zoom into its fractal, and optionally setting up MIDI controllers for it, you can save this set-up to reload later, using the "Save Preferences" command.
8. Saves your compositions as standard MIDI files, which are recognised by, for example, Noteworthy Composer.
9. Works on Windows 95, XP and 7.
10. Free!
Cons
1. Some note sequences might even be called melodies! ;-) You have to experiment to find out what works best for you. Do take note of the hint to choose jagged colour edges, if you want to produce sequences with plenty of variety. It can be hard to avoid creating long sustained notes or long silences.
2. Be warned that this is not designed to give the chords of standard harmony; instead, think Johann Sebastian Bach on acid ... If you want to compose to a set of chord changes, use Band-in-a-Box instead.
3. It uses only one fractal set - the Mandelbrot; you can't choose any other fractal.
4. If you want to reuse your settings in future, you need to think carefully how you name each set-up when saving it as preferences.
5. Fractal music is a-metric (unmeasured), so you can't specify a time signature, such as 4/4 for a march or house music, 3/4 for a waltz or 6/8 for a jig.
6. The help file doesn't explain much, and is a pain to navigate.
Summary
This program does what it says - it generates fractal music. It's most useful for creating new melody and rhythm ideas, and is also a fun workbench for experimenting with MIDI controllers such as Modulation and Expression. The user interface is clean and uncluttered, and everything works as described - which is better than many commercial programs. And it's free!
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Pros
wouldn't know
Cons
"error opening file"
Summary
This will not run on modern versions of Windows. It needs to be pulled from CNET
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Reply by yuyiya on May 12, 2013
Have you tried again recently? What version of Windows are you running?
Pros
Installed on Vista albeit with a warning that it didn't. Tried it anyway and it loaded up fine. And then went to produce five track chaos music which was fascinating and enormous fun.
Cons
Apart from Windows whining about out of date help files and potential installation errors, the program itself is as good a fractal music generator as I've ever owned. lol
Summary
Very cool little piece of software that is neat, quick, exports to midi and I enjoyed it a lot. One star off for Windows out-of-datenedness.
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Pros
at least it uninstalled easily
Cons
Other programs designed to run on XP have run fine for me on Vista. XP was great, but it's not 2004.
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Reply by yuyiya on May 12, 2013
Now in 2013, why not try again on your current Windows? It runs fine on Win 7 Ultimate for me, but I haven't tried it on Win 8 yet.
Pros
Easy to operate when compared to much of the alternative software.
Cons
None that I could find.
Summary
An uncluttered and simple interface. The device produces (to these ears) interesting melodic lines which can be exported for further editing.
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Pros
A cute way of generating random (?) notes on 5 channels.
Cons
Not the easiest interface to get used to. Not sure how to change, if you can, the function used to generate the fractal. Note progressions work well, though some chords can be extremely uncomfortable.
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Pros
Can make great interesting music, a little on the trippy side.
Cons
Doesn't explain itself very well, takes a little experimenting to figure out how to get full use out of it. Tip: You can zoom in pretty much as far as you want...
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Pros
Excellent quality results. Previous knowledge of musical composition helps a lot, you have to think.
Cons
None.
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