More Meaningful Melodies & Enhanced Consonance Control

Windows 10+ and macOs 11+ (Intel), 64 bit
Note that MAIDENS is an unsigned application; both Windows and macOS will prevent you from installing it, unless you manually mark it as a trusted application. See Installing MAIDENS on Windows and Installing MAIDENS on macOS for details.

This version of MAIDENS produces more natural melodies and better adheres to requested harmonic consonance.

New Features

Improved Melody

Introducing a new parameter (displayed as an on-off switch) to enforce a self-balancing melodic model on the top-most line of the generated structures.

Since the launch of the Multiline Generator in version 1.4.9, its weakest aspect has been in the realm of melody. Melodies generated by the Multiline Generator often sounded mechanical and lacked meaning. This changes with version 1.5.6 through the introduction of the Use Melodic Model parameter.

This feature applies multiple complex, context-dependent evaluations to the top-most tier of generated structures to ensure a balanced melody profile. It adjusts the rise and descent, minimizes repeated notes, varies pitches reasonably, and avoids locking itself within a set range.

You will notice a significant difference, especially in solo or near-solo passages, particularly when compared to previous versions of MAIDENS with similar parameter values.

Improved Harmony

Introducing a new parameter (also displayed as an on-off switch) to ensure the generated harmony is at least as consonant as requested.

The new Enforce Minimum Consonance parameter controls the engagement of a newly introduced consonance validation logic. This effectively rejects all chord candidates with a lower consonance score than the requested one.

This parameter does not influence harmonic structures of less than two voices.

Soloing

The Multiline Generator now interprets setting its Number of Voices parameter to 1% as a solo trigger, meaning it will only output one voice.

Keyboard Shortcuts

MAIDENS now features keyboard shortcuts thanks to its new, native global menu. These shortcuts are functional on both Windows and macOS, substituting the CTRL key for CMD.

Improvements

• Clusters can now be nudged beyond the boundaries of their home measure. This means you can slide a note, chord, or rest into the adjacent measure using the Nudge Element Before or Nudge Element After buttons. This functionality also extends to tuplets such as triplets or quintuplets.
• The Generator Advanced Configuration window has been redesigned to better utilize screen real estate and facilitate easier navigation to various parameters with reduced scrolling. Parameters are now arranged in horizontal columns if space permits.
• The macOS version now incorporates a native application menu as expected.
• Minor optimizations were implemented in the audio playback engine, aiming to enhance speed and stability with audio rendition and generation (particularly of interest when exporting to the WAV format).
• Additionally, there were general code improvements intended to enhance application speed, stability, and maintainability.

Changes

• Switched to a 64-bit architecture to access more memory.
• Switched back to a native global menu (as in the early versions of MAIDENS), displayed attached to the main window on Windows and as an application menu on macOS.
• Switched back to native windows (again, as in the early versions of MAIDENS). All primary and secondary windows of MAIDENS are now native windows, with the same look and functionality as other windows displayed by your operating system (Microsoft Windows or Apple macOS).
• Updated application tagline/motto and removed/updated obsolete menu links.
• Updated documentation to include entries for the two newly introduced parameters.

Fixed Bugs

• FIXED: Newly implemented parameters now appear in the Generator Advanced Configuration window when a preset predating their implementation is selected. Previously, selecting such a preset caused them to permanently disappear, and remain unavailable until MAIDENS was restarted.
• FIXED: Attempting to nudge the first or last Cluster of a tuplet (e.g., triplet, quintuplet, etc.) was previously ignored. Now, the entire tuplet is nudged in the direction of the nudge action.
• FIXED: On macOS, secondary windows were opening off-center or offscreen in some situations. They are now correctly centered.

Score Following, More Reliable Playback

Successfully tested on Windows 10 and Windows 11.

This version of MAIDENS marks notes in the score as they are played back. It also fixes the issue of not being able to produce sound on machines with tighten security settings.

The problem: the external FluidSynth binary that MAIDENS was using for producing sound was causing a number of issues with contemporary Windows versions and antivirus software, resulting in MAIDENS being unable to play back the score it was generating, on certain setups at least. While it was working perfectly in MAIDENS' first days, security kept tightening in the last years, to the point where nowadays an executable calling into a third party binary is regarded suspiciously by most antivirus software, and by the Windows operating system itself.

The solution: I dropped the external binary, and developed an embedded sound engine, which is now internal to MAIDENS. While still in its infancy, it does produce sound, and it does enable MAIDENS to play back scores and to export them to WAV files.

As a bonus, this new approach enabled me to add score following to MAIDENS, a long-standing absence from MAIDENS – users had to manually turn pages, scroll, and maybe even zoom in or out during playback, in order to keep track to the music being played: not the case anymore, as now MAIDENS automatically marks the notes, scrolls and zooms as needed, and turns pages automatically.

Other changes include:

• Changed: not closing the Notifications UI anymore in order to change its text; the new text will simply replace the old one if the panel is currently open.
• Fixed bug: time signature numbers not showing anymore.
• Fixed bug: tuplet numbers not showing anymore.

To report bugs, either:

• use the issues tab here on github; or
• write me at claudius.iacob@gmail.com.
  
  
  

Known Errors

1. After running the downloaded install-maidens-1.5.5.exe you may get a window titled Windows protected your PC. You must click More info, and then Run anyway. The MAIDENS application is signed with a valid certificate, but it still needs to "grow its reputation", and until it does it may cause this message to trigger. You may not see the message if you have loosened your Windows security settings globally.

2. Due to reasons described above, MAIDENS may be subjected to severe security limitations on your machine. These may result in the program not being able to call into the third-party applications it depends upon, which in turn results in the program not being able to export generated music to a number of formats. If you observe this behavior:

• if you installed the program inside the Program Files (x86) folder, uninstall it from there, and try installing it to some looser path instead, something like C:\MAIDENS;
• if you already installed the program somewhere else, but still observe the behavior, try loosening your antivirus or Windows/Microsoft Defender security settings around the program. This is usually done by adding path-based exceptions into the antivirus; when you do, make sure you give the path to the entire MAIDENS folder, and not just the path to MAIDENS.exe executable.

Apple MacOs Support (Intel)

Successfully tested on macOs 11.7.1 (Big Sur) on an Intel machine. Should work on 12.6 (Monterey) as well,
and on M1/M2 machines via Rosetta 2

This is a PREVIEW VERSION of MAIDENS for Apple macOS. While it comes with a couple limitations and drawbacks, it is definitely usable.

There hasn't been a version of MAIDENS for macOS since 2014, and migrating to 64bits and complying with the new security model introduced with Catalina were both, quite challenging. This one is essentially a port of the Windows 1.5.5 version and provides the same set of features.

To Install

1. Download maidens-1.5.5-mac-os-preview.zip, un-zip it, and drag the resulting maidens.app to your Applications folder; on first run, right click the Dock icon and select Options → Keep in Dock;
2. Optional, but highly recommended: register MAIDENS as a trusted application for disk access (otherwise, its File Manager will be prevented from showing any files except those from the Public folder; this is needed because the application is not signed, at least not yet):
   1. exit MAIDENS if already running;
   2. go to System Preferences → Security & Privacy;
   3. select Full Disk Access in left column (scroll if needed);
   4. click the lock (bottom left) and provide your password;
   5. click on the plus sign to navigate to maidens in your Applications folder;
   6. click the lock again to close it;
   7. exit the Security & Privacy window.
3. Optional: register *.maid files to be opened by MAIDENS:
   1. after saving your first *.maid file, right click it and select Open with → Other...;
   2. in the Applications window that opens, enable all applications (to the bottom of the window);
   3. select maidens.
      
      
      

To report bugs, either:

• use the issues tab here on github; or
• write me at claudius.iacob@gmail.com.
  
  
  

Known issues

These will be addressed in future versions:

• There is no PDF export for the time being. As an alternative, export your project to MusicXML, then import it in some music notation program, e.g., MuseScore and print it/export to PDF there;
• On retina displays, all windows tend to open off center, to the left and top, including main window. Just drag them where you need them;
• Application menu is not implemented: use the menu attached to the main window (like in Windows) instead. Also, do not click the default Quit MAIDENS application menu item, because it will not ask you to save your changes first (the main window menu item, File → Exit works properly, though).

Better Harmony, Smaller Error Margin

This new version of MAIDENS generates musical material of significantly improved harmonic quality.

A number of changes in this version concur to provide finer and more reliable control over generated material's harmonic quality, namely:

• The harmonic analyzer has been rewritten from scratch, to make it fully compliant with Paul Hindemith's system of auditing chords and organizing them in classes, based on their degree of consonance. This provides a finer degree of control over the harmony the program produces. Note: the actual changes are in the maidens-generators-harmony library.
• Logic has been added to always filter out "shallow chords" (chords that contain very few harmonic intervals due to doubling, such as C4-C5-E5-C6). This results in dramatically improved chances for more interesting, fuller harmonies than version 1.5.0 was able to provide. Note: the actual changes are in the maidens-generators-core-library library.
• The two changes above considerably increased the odds for the program to generate harmonies that are very close, if not precisely as consonant as requested, which permits for much lower settings in the Error margin parameter, whose low limit has now been unlocked down to 1. So, you can now generate with an Error margin of 1, and that is likely to produce output that gets very close to your musical intentions.

Other changes include:

• fixing bug where MAIDENS was unable to playback on Windows machines that had a user account name containing spaces.

To report bugs, either:

• use the issues tab here on github; or
• write me at claudius.iacob@gmail.com.
  
  
  

Known Errors

1. After running the downloaded install-maidens-1.5.4.exe you may get a window titled Windows protected your PC. You must click More info, and then Run anyway. The MAIDENS application is signed with a valid certificate, but it still needs to "grow its reputation", and until it does it may cause this message to trigger. You may not see the message if you have loosened your Windows security settings globally.

2. In unclear circumstances, MAIDENS is subjected to severe security limitations. These result in the program not being able to call into the third-party applications it depends upon, which in turn results in the program not being able to playback generated music or export it (to pretty much any format). If you observe this behavior:

• if you installed the program inside the Program Files (x86) folder (the default), uninstall it from there, and try installing it to some looser path instead, something like C:\maidens;
• if you already installed the program somewhere else, but still observe the behavior, try loosening your antivirus or Windows/Microsoft Defender security settings around the program. This is usually done by adding path-based exceptions into the antivirus; when you do, make sure you give the path to the entire MAIDENS folder, and not just the path to MAIDENS.exe executable.

2021 Release (v.1.5.0)

What's New

This is essentially the 1.4.9 version launched on 2021/02/01 with a significant ammount of bugs fixed, plus:

• generation engine improvements, to make generating content significantly faster, with only marginal loss in quality;
• music XML export, to make integrating with your score notation editors or DAWs a lot easier;
• nicer UI, with overall better color scheme, minor redesigns of the Note and Configuration UIs, support for high density screens and themes (four themes are currently bundled with the application, for both dark and light modes);
• more templates and presets: go to File > New from Template to quickly get started on prototyping common musical ideas;
• upgraded Fluidsynth for better playback quality.

Check the release notes for version 1.4.9 to get a fuller picture of this release.

IMPORTANT: if, after running the downloaded install-maidens-1.5.0.exe you get a window titled Windows protected your PC, click More info, then Run anyway.
The MAIDENS application is signed with a valid certificate, but it still needs to "grow its reputation", and until it does it may cause this message to trigger. You may not see the message if you have loosened your Windows security settings globally.