Procedural Music Generation

Back to the thesis example archive

This documentation covers the current melody-generation engine, the default entry point in code/main.py, the reusable CLI workflow in code/app_cli.py, and the internal modules that power form, harmony, notation, and rendering.

The guides are written to match the current repository layout, while the API reference is generated directly from the Python modules and docstrings in code/main.py and code/melody_engine/.

The goal is to make the codebase easy to navigate whether you want to:

• generate melodies or chorales,

• render cropped PDFs and WAV files,

• experiment with form, harmony, voice profiles, and clefs,

• or extend the project toward richer multi-voice generation.

Guides

• Getting Started
  • Repository Structure
  • Typical Workflow
  • Naming And Output
  • Voice Profiles And Clefs
• CLI Reference
  • Generation Command
  • Core Options
  • Rendering Options
  • Examples
  • Render Mode
  • Manual Harmony Format
• Architecture
  • High-Level Design
  • Core Modules
  • Current Design Priorities
  • Chorale Direction

API Reference

• Melody Engine API
  • Package Overview
  • Structure Module
  • Theory Module
  • Constraints Module
  • Generator Module
  • LilyPond Module
• Main CLI Module
  • build_constraints()
  • main()

Quick Start

Generate LilyPond only:

python3 code/main.py

Generate a melody and also render cropped PDF output:

python3 code/main.py --pdf

Render audio later without regenerating:

python3 code/main.py render --seed 11 --wav

Useful Entry Points

• code/main.py: default project entry point and constraint configuration

• code/app_cli.py: reusable CLI workflow for generation and rerendering

• code/melody_engine/: reusable engine modules

• docs/: documentation source

• webpage/index.html: static example archive and project page

Documentation Workflow

Build the HTML documentation locally:

cd docs
./build_docs.zsh

The generated site is written to docs/_build/html/ and is the same material deployed by webpage/deploy.zsh.

Author Reference

Open author-only workflow notes

This material covers thesis-specific example curation and deployment details that are useful for maintaining the project, but not required for normal program usage.