Once upon a time there was a pinball machine that wanted to be Ravel, Satie, Brian Eno and Sir Harrison Birtwistle.
All at the same time...

An interactive music toy for Windows 3.x / 9X and maybe XP

Gbloink! is a "sound toy" : a program that lets you produce music from any Windows PC with a Midi soundcard or external Midi synthesizer. Three balls bounce around a play area. When one collides with an object, it triggers a Midi note whose pitch depends on the vertical position of the ball.

Initially the result can sound quite as arbitrary as any random music generating program. But after playing with the program for a few minutes, the user should notice a difference. Once the play area is populated with obstacles, structure begins to spontaneously emerge. The balls often fall into cyclic patterns causing repetitions and rhythms; or one ball might fall behind another with the effect that its voice starts echoing the melody of the first. This spontaneous order gives the music a different character to most chance based and ambient music.

Interacting with the music is also different. I'm interested in both music and user interfaces, and Gbloink! was written as an experiment in both these areas. The program is designed to be used in an improvisatory way. You practice and learn to perform with it as you would with a musical instrument. Consequently there is no distinction between composition and performance or any output other than using it.

The user controls events mainly by scribbling obstacles within the play area. There are no statistical models to get to grips with; and I have dispensed with setting parameters by sliders in favour of setting parameters by simply clicking somewhere along a coloured bar. This can seem confusing at first, but soon becomes very fluid. And it gives the user very immediate, real-time control over the mood and character of the music. It's like being able to improvise with three instruments at once; or rather, to guide the improvisations of three musicians at once.

Hope you have as much fun as I do with the program, and please tell me if you discover any bugs, have any suggestions, or want to show off any of your own compositions.