Varianish: Jamming with Pattern Repetition

Abstract

In music, patterns and pattern repetition are often regarded as a machine-like task, indeed often delegated to drum Machines and sequencers. Nevertheless, human players add subtle differences and variations to repeated patterns that are musically interesting and often unique. Especially when looking at minimal music, pattern repetitions create hypnotic effects and the human mind blends out the actual pattern to focus on variation and tiny differences over time. Varianish is a musical instrument that aims at turning this phenomenon into a new musical experience for musician and audience: Musical pattern repetitions are found in live music and Varianish generates additional (musical) output accordingly that adds substantially to the overall musical expression. Apart from the theory behind the pattern finding and matching and the conceptual design, a demonstrator implementation of Varianish is presented and evaluated.