RHYTHMOS: An Interactive Software Tool-Kit for Exploring Musical Rhythm

RHYTHMOS is an interactive software system designed as a toolkit for the visualization, exploration, understanding, analysis, play-along practice, and composition of musical notated (symbolic) rhythms. It provides user-friendly bridges between art (music composition), performance (praxis), mathematics (cyclic polygons and the distance geometry of point sets on a circle), and science (the psychology of music perception).

RHYTHMOS has applications to teaching rhythm in the primary and secondary school systems, as well as research in universities. It will also appeal to both amateur and professional musicians.

Benefits:

1. Visualization capabilities and mathematical analysis of rhythms: RHYTHMOS is the first of its kind: no other software system provides so many analytic tools. Rhythms can be represented as cyclic necklaces on the circle of time as well as with a histogram representing the full-intervallic content of all inter-onset durations. Rhythms can also be displayed in vertical braid notation so that the user can play along following the left-hand and right-hand beat as they occur on the screen. Rhythmic distances representing similarity measures between different rhythms can also be computed with RHYTHMOS.


2. Simplicity and ease of use: As a tool for simply creating rhythms and listening to them, RHYTHMOS is much simpler and easier to use than existing systems.


3. Versatility: RYHTHMOS is not limited to the most popular 12-beat or 16-beat patterns. Rhythms can be heard at different tempos and volume, and more than one rhythm may be heard simultaneously, each with a different timbre.

RHYTMOS is a fully functional software application that can easily be promoted either as as a standalone product or integrated into existing products from companies offering music learning tools.

Positive feedbacks from users interested in rhythm learning, ranging from beginners to professional musicians.