Jonathon, Timothy, and Deb provided some intresting ideas on generating
melodies. I won't repeat their posts here as they don't directly related to
FB.

Jonathon, your discussion of "Greeking"  is a fascinating window into the
design world. I found it educational. I don't immediately see how one would
apply "Greeking" to music composition. Perhaps you could amplify on the
concept. I do understand how different languages, and especially languages
with other than English/French/Spanish characters, would have a distinctive
appearance apart from content. This is most obvious with Greek, German, and
Cyrillic alphabets. But, how would this relate to musical compostion.

I have been visiting many web sites dealing with so-called "algorithmic
composition" and I've learned that there are several basic ways of
generating melodies.

One of them relies on random numbers, another on fractal equations and a
third on pre-existing melodies which are then varied in different ways. My
present plan is to generate notes somewhat randomly (but with certain rules
of my own creation controlling the randomness) and then to apply
variations, permutations, and so forth on the randomly-generated notes.

Timothy, the algorithm you report from Scientific American seems rather
primitive. I think my present ideas may be beyond that. Thanks, anyway.

Deb, The concept of generating melodies from words is rather interesting. I
wonder of a Shakespearian sonnet would make music with a different
emotional/aesthetic feel than, say, a section of the internal revenue code.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the IRS code made for better music?

Richard