Version 42 of Muse

8-16-2005: Muse has been renamed to Muze, to avoid confusion with a well-known Linux midi application. There are new beta versions available at http://www.mymuze.com

Also, GREAT NEWS! Muze now runs on Windows, OSX, and Linux. You can download both a cross-platform Starkit, or Starpack binaries for the various platforms. There are many many new features. Take a look at the help menu to see the details.

7-6-2005: New version (b5) posted today -- see below.

6-29-2005: Eolas Muse v. 2.0(demo) is being released today to the Tcl world for beta-testing. It was developed by Mike Doyle (MDD), Cyndy Lilagan and Maury Pescitelli of Eolas. We'd like to invite members of the Tcl Community to help out with the beta test, by beating on it a bit and letting us know what you think. At least for now, Muse is only available for the Windows platform.

You can download the Windows Starkit at http://www.eolas.com/muse/muse-2b5.kit (if you already have tclkit), or the Starpack at http://www.eolas.com/muse/muse-2b5.exe (or [L1 ]) for a self-contained single-file executable. There are also some example Muse art (musart) files available for download: [L2 ] [L3 ] [L4 ] [L5 ] [L6 ] (they don't sound like much, but they do demonstrate Muse in action). Please post to this wiki page any cool musart files that you create with Muse.

This is free-but-not-open-source software, so please don't be put off by the fact that the main source file is bytecode compiled. We're doing it this way because we're expecting to have an enhanced commercial version available for sale sometime mid-summer 2005.

LV What are the software requirements besides downloading the two files above? MDD: First of all, you don't need both files above, just either the Starkit or the Starpack (depending on whether you've already got tclkit installed). As far as hardware requirements go, you'll need a Windows PC with a MIDI-capable sound card. That's it, as far as I know.

About Eolas Muse

Eolas Muse is the first example of an addictive new category of personal entertainment software that merges the best features of interactive graphics with an exciting new approach to music authoring. With Muse, you create art that is both active and interactive and, while you're at it, you'll find that you're creating music that is both visual and dynamic.

Background

Originally inspired by a museum exhibit at the Exploratorium, in San Francisco, Muse version 1.0 was developed by Cheong Ang and Mike Doyle, of Eolas Technologies Inc., in 1994-1995. This version, while extremely limited in functionality, entranced virtually everyone who saw it. In fact, that's why we named it Muse.

Muse 2.0 was developed by Eolas' Mike Doyle, Cyndy Lilagan and Maury Pescitelli, in 2005, with technical assistance from Steve Landers. Muse 2.0 added much to the original Muse concept, and now pushes the envelope in merging the fields of art and music in new and innovative ways.

Muse 2.0 was a complete rewrite, inspired in concept by Muse 1.0, but built from the ground up using Starkit technology.

Getting Started

All you have to do to get started creating your own exciting Muse artwork is to select a working color, by clicking on one of the keys of the onscreen piano keyboard, then select the drawing tool that you'd like to use. Then just drag your mouse on the canvas while holding down the left mouse button to draw an object. Each color on the keyboard is associated with a different musical note.

You'll notice four colored trackers, small dots, moving across the screen. When any of these trackers crosses a color that you've drawn, Muse plays the musical note associated with that color.

There is much much more to the functionality in Muse. Just click on the Help menu option to see the complete instructions for use.

Acknowledgements

Eolas Muse 2.0 makes use of some pieces of code contributed to the Tclers' Wiki by Tcl luminary, Richard Suchenwirth. These pieces include Richard's A tiny drawing program and A toy piano. Also, some code was used from Maurice Ulis' Serializing a canvas widget. Finally, the Help system is provided by jcw's Wikit package. The Muse authors would like to thank these creative Tclers for their always-interesting OSS contributions to the Tcl Community.

We would like to give special thanks to Jean-Claude Wippler and Steve Landers, et al., for bringing the Tcl Starkit technology into being. It really is the best thing (for software development, at least) since sliced bread.

RS: Drawing works well here on my old W95 box, but I hear no sound. In contrast, TclMusic works and sounds as usual. MDD: I've noticed the same problem on my daughter's 6-year-old PC. I'm not sure what the problem is, other than the feeling that it must reside in the midilib dll. RS: On a more recent XP box box at work, sounds come too - a truly fascinating plaything. Just that I have to concentrate on work here... MDD: That's great! You just made my day.

RLH: Works fine on WinXP. I was wondering, on a real piano you can run you finger from one side of the keyboard to another, Muse doesn't let you do that. Maybe it wasn't meant too? MDD: If you draw the scales on the canvas, you can do that by then passing the mouse cursor back and forth over the drawing

PWQ '2 Jul 05 Feedback on Muse 2.0, Tested on Windows2000 Server. The user was surprised or confused by the fact that:

They could not delete a 'blank' note (black chord). You first have to change it's colour.
The tracker would skip notes that are placed close together on the track.
That the animation of the tracker dot was not in the colour of the note being played.
The error message that y0 did not exist when attempting to create polygons sometimes.
Accidently creating very thin rectangle that could not be filled or deleted.
Sometimes tracks do not respect the F1/F2 to hide or show.
That F10/F9 do not show the default tracks.
The speed of the tracker dot could not be changed by the way the track was drawn (ie fast or slow), or apparantly by any other means.
They could not move the track points once drawn.

MDD: Thanks for the comments. First of all, there's a new rev (b5) you should download. Regarding the specific comments: 1) At least for now, that's a feature, not a bug, 2) If you draw a path quickly, it spreads the path points apart and you can therefore possibly skip over colors. A solution is to use the "Point" tool, 3) Nice catch! It's fixed now., 4) We're having trouble reproducing that problem, can you remember what sequence of actions caused it?, 5) We're working on this one, 6) No one else seems to be encountering this, and we can't reproduce it, 7) ditto, we can't reproduce this one either. One problem we have noticed, though, is that F10 freezes the window until you click anywhere in the window, which unfreezes it again. Not sure why that's happening., 8) and 9) No one else is encountering this problem, that we know of. It works fine on the 20+ systems we've tested it on. Some other new features in the latest revision include 1) saving the state of the default trackers (on or off) when you save a file, so that, if you save while trackers are turned off via F10, then they'll stay off next time you launch the image, and 2) argv processing, so you can now associate musart (.msc) files with muse-2b5.exe, and just double click the musart files to launch them in Muse.

[ Category Application | Category Toys | Category Music ]