1874 Sakura: Koto Studio

1874 Sakura writes complete pieces of Japanese and Chinese music and plays
them on koto, guzheng, shakuhachi, erhu and a taiko ensemble. Press generate and
you get a whole piece in jo-ha-kyū form, the shape of nearly every Japanese
performing art: a slow opening called by a temple bell or a pair of wooden
clappers, a development, a still centre where a flute plays alone over the shō,
a rapid finish where the whole ensemble converges on the melody, and a closing
that thins back to nothing.

One melody carries each piece. It is previewed, stated, slowed down alone over
the drone, and lifted an octave for the finish - so you can hum it back after one
listen. The harmony works the way this music does: no chord changes, but a tone
centre that moves by fourth or fifth over a tonic the shō never leaves.

Every instrument is synthesised from how it makes sound. Plucked strings - koto,
guzheng, shamisen, biwa, pipa - are modelled as vibrating strings, with the
koto's pressed-string bend. Flutes - shakuhachi, dizi, xiao, hichiriki - are
mostly air, with the pitch arriving from underneath. The erhu slides and sings.
Temple bowls and bells ring from inharmonic partials. The taiko ensemble plays
from real recordings, or switch them off and every drum is modelled.

The pieces come from chaos maths. A Lorenz attractor picks the melody's rhythm and
shape and then its notes; a logistic map drives the percussion, so no two bars
need be alike. A small model learns as it writes, rewarded for the fourths,
fifths and steps this music is built on. The CHAOS / TASTE slider decides how much
say each one gets.

Twelve styles. Eight traditional - Sakura folk, Gagaku court music, Guzheng, a
Taiko ensemble, Zen meditation, Silk Road, Kabuki theatre and Neo-Tokyo fusion -
and four fast action styles built for games: Samurai, Shinobi, Wuxia and Cyber
Edo. Twelve pentatonic and Chinese scales, from hirajōshi and in-sen to gong and
yu. Choosing a style loads its melody instrument and its ensemble.

Every piece is built from its seed. Write the seed down and you can have that
exact piece again, note for note. A seed from the browser version rebuilds the
same piece here.

You can play over it, too. The pads are the notes of the piece's scale rather
than a piano keyboard, so nothing you touch is wrong, and the sixteen-step lane
follows the piece. Both play the melody or any part of the ensemble.

Turn on RADIO and it keeps playing, picking a new style, key, scale and tempo for
every piece.

You also get:

• 12 styles, 12 scales, 12 keys, tempo and density
• 24 instruments and 13 one-click ensembles
• A full instrument editor: string, breath, bell, vibrato, filter and envelopes
• Sampled or synthesised taiko, switchable
• Six-part mixer with a meter on every part
• Temple reverb, tempo-synced echo, ensemble width and a filter sweep
• Export any piece as a MIDI file, free
• Render a WAV mix, or stems - one WAV per part, in a zip
• UI scale, for tablets
• Live spectrum and waveform, and the chaos engine drawn as it runs

Plug in a USB MIDI keyboard and it plays whichever part you have selected.
Every part sends on its own MIDI channel and every drum has a note and a
channel of its own, so the app can drive your own sounds.

The app is free: every piece, every sound and MIDI export are yours without
paying. Rendering to audio - the WAV mix and the stems - is a one-time
purchase.

No account, no ads, no subscription. Works offline.

Recent changes:
Added Track Presets section.