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Ye Olde Canon Generator

by Christopher Bailey

Remember, as with most C. Bailey web apps, there's little or no error checking, so if things @#%$@%$# up, check your input carefully.

Instructions are here.

Enter the number of voices: 2 3 4 5 6

Enter the Fatness Factor:

Enter the Canon's theme (in the format explained above):







Optional: Enter New List(s) of Legal Harmonies.

Explanation: The Canon-Maker proceeds by trying out every possible canonic combination involving your theme, any of its transpositions, and any of it's inversions, at any rhythmic positions up to a point defined by the Fatness Factor.

A canonic combination "succeeds" if all of the vertical coincidences are harmonies defined somewhere in the Lists of Legal Harmonies.

The Default Lists are of "Post-Romantic Consonances": chords you'd typically find in slow, seeping chromatic counterpoint in Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner, etc., which includes dominant and 1/2-diminished 7th chords, diminished 7ths, any kind of tonal triad, any whole-tone scale combination. . . . basically, chords or set-classes with no minor seconds in them (a few other sonorities, (such as stacked 4th (027) chords) are left off the list for other reasons of my own taste).

Below, you may replace the Default Lists with your own set of set-classes. Keep in mind, the fewer "legal" set-classes, the harder it's going to be to find a legal canon. On the other hand, a free-for-all will result in huuuuuuuuuuuge numbers of solutions, so you want to avoid that as well.

The sets are listed by cardinality, in set-theory integer notation.



Legal Chords/Sonorities/Sets/Collections of size/cardinality 2 (i.e. intervals):


Legal Chords/Sonorities/Sets/Collections of size/cardinality 3:


Legal Chords/Sonorities/Sets/Collections of size/cardinality 4:


Legal Chords/Sonorities/Sets/Collections of size/cardinality 5:


Legal Chords/Sonorities/Sets/Collections of size/cardinality 6: