$29, eventide.com
It’s 1986. Pixar is based, the Soviets launch the Mir house station, and American composer Laurie Spiegel creates Music Mouse — an algorithmic concord instrument for the Atari, Amiga, and Macintosh. Inside its person handbook is Spiegel’s foreword, uncanny in its prescience for the AI tempest that may observe 40 years later:
“It is a very thrilling time for music. With the arrival of computer systems, a lot of music’s previous restrictions can start to fall away, in order that it turns into potential for extra individuals to make extra satisfying music, extra enjoyably and simply, no matter bodily coordination or theoretical research, of keyboard expertise or fluency with notation.”
Regardless of her optimistic view of the time, I can’t assist however discover an virtually perverse parallel with Mikey Shulman’s controversial 2025 feedback round AI music manufacturing. It’s becoming, then, that Eventide has breathed new life into Spiegel’s classic software program, given the limitations have now been lowered to stringing collectively a Suno immediate.
In a world the place just about each element of the manufacturing lifecycle could be outsourced to an app, Music Mouse affords a completely completely different proposition — however is it one which’s related to trendy producers?
What’s Music Mouse?
Conceived as ‘an clever instrument’, Music Mouse generates chords and melodies utilizing the pc mouse — no piano chops required. I’m greeted by a easy grid, its axes bordered by perpendicular keybeds that kind the muse of an intuitive system: transfer your cursor and the notes change.
By default, the horizontal axis performs a triad and the vertical axis performs a single word, so you may play melodies over chords, or maybe a bass half beneath:
Pitch is snapped to the chosen scale, so it’s not possible to play a ‘mistaken’ word — solely roughly fascinating ones inside your chosen tonal house, relying the way you navigate between them.
Although not at all revolutionary by in the present day’s requirements, I’m struck by the software program’s immediacy. And it’s a sexy premise: outline the system’s behaviour, feed it some enter, and benefit from the fruits of the machine’s labour.
A lot of Spiegel’s decade-spanning discography has been constructed on such algorithmic labour. She even went so far as utilizing the genetic code of an infectious pathogen, mapping its RNA sequence to musical notes in Strand of Life (“Viroid”). A considerable portion of Unseen Worlds — the 1991 album to which the piece belongs — was composed utilizing Music Mouse. As I familiarise myself with this system, my understanding of how she did so deepens.
Composing with Music Mouse
Creating with Music Mouse is all about gesture. Brief cursor actions ship linear melodic movement, whereas extra drastic shifts lead to sharper harmonic jumps. Every swipe triggers new notes, however playback could be quickly muted by holding the left mouse button.
I shortly discover coaxing out a desired end result requires some finesse. Though playback is quantised to the set tempo, there’s a knack to getting the timing excellent. Life turns into simpler as soon as I plug in a USB mouse.
You’ll additionally want to look at the grid’s axes to see how far you’ve gone for those who’re focusing on particular notes. On this sense, Music Mouse does fall wanting its goal — there’s nonetheless some theoretical understanding of intervals obligatory for extra intentional composition.
With my proper hand on the mouse, my left rests on the keyboard, shaping this system’s behaviour in actual time via varied shortcuts:
Issues get notably thrilling as soon as I begin experimenting with Therapy and Sample settings. Many pleasant ostinati emerge, although concepts are onerous to repeat. In the event you’re feeling treasured, it’s price recording Music Mouse’s output.
By Spiegel’s personal admission, Music Mouse is encoded together with her personal aesthetic biases, together with a nudge in the direction of stepwise contrapuntal motion. With sure settings, issues shortly veer into baroque territory. I momentarily ponder what Bach would suppose.
This bias is restrictive, at instances. There are solely six Concord modes, and I can’t assist however surprise why Eventide didn’t add extra to this contemporary version of Music Mouse. It’s a curious omission for a instrument constructed round abstracting principle — modal choices and even customized scales would supply a a lot wider palette.
Utilizing Music Mouse’s built-in sounds
Music Mouse doesn’t simply present concord — an FM-style synth engine is in-built, with 32 presets crafted by Spiegel herself. There’s a distinctly New Age flavour to the sounds — flutish tones, meditative bells, optimistic pads. They gained’t be to everybody’s style, however I discover they complement this system’s musical output, and are perfect for doodles and sketches.
A number of fundamental controls enable timbral shaping, however Music Mouse’s sound design choices are pretty restricted. Luckily, its MIDI output could be piped into exterior devices or the DAW, doubtless the place the instrument’s most potential lies. I attempt pairing it with Child Audio’s Grainferno synth, then with a TR-808 drum rack in Ableton, which ends up in intriguing grooves.
I then uncover every voice could be routed to a separate MIDI channel, and arrange a four-part ‘band’ of synths. As its conductor, Music Mouse actually comes alive:
Is Music Mouse price shopping for?
I’ve probably the most enjoyable making music once I deal with it as play. There’s normally an finish aim lurking within the background, however the enjoyment comes from experimentation — nudging, tweaking, seeing what occurs. Music Mouse is a dependable foil for that discovery course of.
In comparison with a contemporary principle instrument like Scaler, Music Mouse doesn’t do all that a lot, however that’s sort of the purpose. Fairly than overwhelm the person with choices, it offers you an outlined and comparatively easy system, and allows you to discover it.
It feels extra like a toy than a instrument, however not in a nasty method, and its comparatively low worth makes it price a punt, particularly as soon as mixed together with your DAW’s built-in MIDI instruments and digital devices.
I’m left pondering: how a lot of the creative course of can we delegate to a machine earlier than the result’s now not our personal?
Talking in a 1987 demo, Spiegel might need the correct reply: “That’s the trick. It’s deciding what issues needs to be reserved to the person’s management always, and which issues could be usefully automated, and but to by no means accomplish that in a method that deprives an individual altogether of management.”
The query isn’t whether or not we use instruments to help creativity — we all the time have. It’s how a lot of the decision-making we’re prepared to surrender alongside the best way.
With Music Mouse, you’re nonetheless doing the majority of the artistic work, nonetheless making decisions, nonetheless shaping the result. 4 a long time on, in an period the place instruments have virtually completely collapsed the space between enter and output, Spiegel’s software program stays a compelling instance of the place the road ought to lie.
Key Options
- Play as much as 4 voices with simply your mouse
- 6 scale presets
- Parallel or opposite movement choices
- Transpose enjoying vary on the fly
- 10 arpeggiator-style patterns
- 2 switchable tempos
- Staccato, half legato, and legato articulations
- Unbiased MIDI channel for every voice
- Constructed-in FM-style synth with 32 presets and fundamental controls
- Ship MIDI to the DAW or exterior devices
James is a contract author for MusicTech. You will usually discover him pushing plugins to their limits, skimming via the newest pattern packs, or obsessively watching Rig Rundowns. With a background in dwell music, he additionally loves discovering elegant options to complicated issues — particularly in the case of gear.
