A visual language framework for music rendering using L-system

Although the existing Lindenmayer Systems (L-Systems) have been traditionally used to model plant development graphically, it is also possible to interpret L-Systems for music rendering. However, many of the existing L-System modelling applications, especially for musical rendering do not cater a larger circle of people who may not be well-versed in music and neither for those with programming skill nor prior knowledge in L-Systems. In this paper, a visual programming framework is proposed for L-System music rendering in order to cater a larger circle of people including non-experts in L-System and music. A visual language framework for L-System has been developed and the usefulness and the efficiency of visual language in L-System music rendering have also been studied. The visual language framework includes the L-System attributes and standard musical grammar rules in the form of simplified icon-based visual language. Furthermore, the music rendering has also been further fine-tuned by using stochastic and context-sensitive L-Systems. Based on the evaluation of the proposed visual language framework, it has been shown to be effective in the sense that anyone who does not have prior knowledge in L-System music may also fully utilize the easily generated musical sound based on the original L-System concepts.