The Music of Turns

A story of divine inspiration, programming for fun, and feature creep.

Endnight programming

It was the end of the night, 3am. I could see the sun peak out from behind the horizon, not shy enough to let me be. I was speaking to some friends and solving my rubik's cubes, and one of them mentioned an idea that had been bugging him for a while now. What if we could make music from the turns you'd use to solve a rubik's cube. The spark hit me as the spell of night neared its end, and I couldn't stop myself. I started to code. Working with heavy sleep deprivation was hard, but the spark of inspiration overrode all inertia.

I began to code. I had an idea to implement smart cubes into this, creating real time music with your solves.

With another endnight coding session, I ended up coding this small program, turning rubik's cube notation into music with deterministically pseudorandom rhythm and octave choices, and flexibility to restrict the music to certain scales. I blended my knowledge of music theory and computers for the first time, and my mind felt like a blazing furnace, and the program was glowing hot metal that had to be shaped quickly, or before it could harden.

I was a step away from my vision with all the power and inspiration to bring it into reality, but I didn't even own a smart cube. The project went on a temporary break but the furnace stayed warm.

Two days before I acquired one, I saw a youtube video from a large channel talking about the same thing :(

The metal had set. The fires were out. I was too slow to capture my inspiration, but what's left of the project remains. It waits for me still, alongside all the others.