Computer Assisted Melo-rhythmic Generation of Traditional Chinese Music from Ink Brush Calligraphy

CalliMusic, is a system developed for users to generate traditional Chinesemusic by writing Chinese ink brush calligraphy, turning the long-believedstrong linkage between the two art forms with rich histories into reality. Inaddition to traditional calligraphy writing instruments (brush, ink and paper),a camera is the only addition needed to convert the motion of the ink brushinto musical notes through a variety of mappings such as human-inspired,statistical and a hybrid. The design of the system, including details of eachmapping and research issues encountered are discussed. A user study of systemperformance suggests that the result is quite encouraging. The technique is,obviously, applicable to other related art forms with a wide range ofapplications.