Maidens 1.4.9 for Windows – experimental
Released on 2021/02/01
Release Notes
Windows-only preview of the 1.5 version, giving you a chance to experience the new Multiline Generator — also named Harmony Generator internally —, literally the most advanced and well written piece of code this project has ever seen so far.
The new Generator was built from ground up and uses an entirely new architecture, which is more robust, scalable and maintainable, and which centers around the idea that any piece of well written music constitutes the congruence of a number of parametric forces that acted gracefully upon the primary material that is musical sound. Therefore, the Multiline Generator operates a number of Music Traits (such as rhythm, melody, harmony, etc.), each of them running severals intrinsic or contextual Analyzers. These evaluate and select from thousands of raw musical structures, which, in turn are provided by one or more Musical Sources — essentially, stochastic devices. User-controlled Parameters act both upon the Analyzers and the Sources, in order to make sure that only the most fit of the structures make it to the resulting music. This is an open architecture: the more Parameters and Analyzers are added to the system, the better the assessment process will be, and the more qualitative the resulting music.
Besides the new architecture, the new Generator introduces the concept of dynamic parameters (they change their value in time, making, e.g., a consonant passage “morph” into a dissonant one) and provides an advanced UI to control them, by means of an Envelope Editor.
On top of that comes preset management: you can save a particular configuration that proved to yield viable musical results in order to reuse or amend it afterwards. The new architecture also enables progress reporting, so that the generation process does not block MAIDENS anymore (as legacy Generators did). Instead, you get a progress bar letting you know how much work is left for the Generator to do — and you can abort the process at any time.
The Multiline Generator can be used to generate isolated lines, polyphonies, isomorphic (homophonic) chorals, and anything in between. It is seen completely replacing the legacy Generators in the near future.
Other worth mentioning changes in this version include replacing the score rendering engine (for better or for worse, but this is a long-term project), and introducing a templating system (accessible via File → New from Template…).
Windows Specific Notes
- This release has been built and tested on Windows 10. It might work on other Windows versions as well, but they are not officially supported.
- Microsoft has made it increasingly hard to install unsigned software (such as MAIDENS). To make life easier for users, this release contains no installer software. Simply unzip the archive to your Documents directory, then run MAIDENS.exe, which you’ll find inside the resulting folder.
- Do not attempt to unzip to the Program Files folder; most likely, some part of the program will fail to work if you do.
- You should not need administrator privileges, as long as you unzip into your own Documents directory.
- To make your experience better, pin MAIDENS.exe to the taskbar once it is running, or make a shortcut to it on the desktop.
- If you want to be able to open MAIDENS project files by double clicking, you need to manually register them to MAIDENS: first create a *.maid file by saving a project inside MAIDENS, then double-click it; when Windows asks you what to use for opening the file, choose MAIDENS.exe (it might not be on the list, you may need to navigate to it).
Bug Fixes
- 0000069: When generating harmonies, split global available ambitus/gamut in zones.
- 0000047: Contextual menu header should provide more info.
- 0000065: Centering a child window over its parent fails on secondary monitor.
- 0000055: Properly re-integrate legacy generators as built-in libraries.
- 0000053: Runtime Exception when adding a Part to a score with a shifted Part.
- 0000046: Runtime Error when opening default project over unsaved project.
- 0000033: Switching part does not ignore empty voices.
- 0000044: Score element not selected in the score after creation or editing.
- 0000009: Cross selection not working.
- 0000030: Selecting a Part node in the Tree does not highlight any part labels in the score.
- 0000045: Right-clicking a hotspot does not select it.
- 0000010: Tuplets bracket and number not rendering properly.
- 0000007: Natural accidental position adjustment.
- 0000006: Improve ghost rests’ look & feel.
- 0000043: Rests hotspots are misaligned.
- 0000058: Generators that output rests should collapse them.
- 0000070: Generator configuration not saved along with the project.
- 0000003: File Save dialog — problems with typing file name.
New Features
- 0000054: Integrate the new Harmonic Generator into MAIDENS.
- [Not tracked]: Add presets management support to the new Harmonic Generator.
- [Not tracked]: Build and integrate an Envelope Editor to the new Harmonic Generator for editing Parameter values that evolve over time.
- [Not tracked]: Add New from Template… functionality to the File menu.
- 0000049: Assign default contextual menu action to middle click.
Tasks Done
- 0000016: Update website.
Releases List
Maidens 1.4.9 for Windows – experimental
Introduces the Multiline Generator, dynamic parameters and presets