Music Mouse
A browser remake of Laurie Spiegel's Music Mouse that turns simple cursor movements into algorithmic melodies, harmonies and the occasional accidental masterpiece.
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Product information
Overview
Music Mouse turns one of the most ordinary computer gestures into a musical performance. Move the pointer around an XY grid and melodies, harmonies and patterns emerge in real time, guided by musical rules that keep the whole thing from immediately becoming keyboard soup. This browser version by Tero Parviainen is a partial emulation of Laurie Spiegel's original 1980s Music Mouse. There is nothing to install and very little standing between you and making music. Open the page, move the mouse and suddenly your cursor has a considerably more interesting job than clicking buttons.
Push Music Around
When Laurie Spiegel began developing Music Mouse after getting a Macintosh in the mid 1980s, the idea was wonderfully direct. A computer had a mouse now, so why not use it to push sound around? The resulting instrument handles much of the underlying harmonic logic while leaving direction, movement and expression in the hands of the person playing it. That distinction matters. Music Mouse is algorithmic, but it is not supposed to compose instead of you. Spiegel called the original an intelligent instrument. The rules provide a musical playground, while the mouse still needs a human attached to it.
A Classic Rebuilt From Clues
Parviainen's browser version has its own charmingly hackerish origin story. He built it without access to a working copy of the original Music Mouse, reconstructing its behavior from Laurie Spiegel's manual, screenshots and videos of the software in action. The result is intentionally incomplete, but captures enough of the original idea to make a piece of early computer music history playable from a modern browser. No vintage Macintosh, Atari or Amiga required. Your suspicious number of open browser tabs will do just fine.
Music Mouse, Rhythm Rat
The mouse in Music Mouse was originally quite literal. It referred to the Macintosh mouse used to play it. Spiegel later joked that her preferred trackball might have required calling it Music Rat instead. Apparently the rodent based product line could have gone further. Spiegel once considered making something called Rhythm Rat and later joked about a Counterpoint Chipmunk. Neither happened, unfortunately, leaving Music Mouse to carry the entire computer music rodent ecosystem by itself.