MusCom was a music composer, my final-year project in 2009 and 2010. It gave people software instruments to play with a game-pad, and it had big plans: touch, and AI that could help compose, because music has structure and structure can be mapped to intent.
It failed in almost all its aspects and objectives, with the minor exception of the project marks. That was never the concern. There were more disastrous projects before it, but those were forced on me and known from the start to be doomed. MusCom was my own ambition, and its failure lingered through many false starts afterwards.
One can say there was a lack of experience, in planning and in building. The real disappointment is that the failure never turned into the curiosity and learning it should have. It turned into a long dip in performance and interest, until real work brought the energy back.
What it should be
MusCom is unfinished, and there is still the wish to complete it with everything learnt since. This time the objective is fun and learning, with all the source code and the lessons open-sourced as they come.
Its core objective is simple: to allow the composition of music through digital, computational means. The approach is domain-driven, with the abstraction kept at the point where sound becomes music. Cultural references to music must not be part of the base language, though they can be defined using it. That way the language does not age with any one tradition.
And the end-user should not be a musician. It should be a lay person, like me. That keeps learning at the centre, and leaves room for music education later.
MusCom is now one of the creative stories at Mviaso: a composer, reborn.
Drafted in January 2023
Updated for site in 2026