MOTIF

Search real MIDI, play it in-browser, then generate a Motif variation.

MOTIF is a small experiment in music-as-code: treat MIDI as structural data, not audio. It pulls MIDI patterns from the web, plays the original performance, then generates a “similar-but-different” procedural version using Web Audio.

About

• What it does: Search songs → pick a result → play the original MIDI → generate and play a Motif variant.
• Why it’s fun: It’s like “hear a MIDI version of anything”, then remix it into something new.
• Status: Working locally end-to-end. Hosted frontend exists, backend hosting may be separate depending on deployment.

Live demo

• Frontend: https://motif-46uf00ypw-boom-test-c54cde04.vercel.app

Note: if the backend isn’t deployed/configured for the demo environment, search/fetch won’t work from the hosted URL. Run locally for the full experience.

Features

• MIDI search (currently BitMidi; additional sources optional)
• MIDI fetch + validation + caching via an Express backend
• Browser playback with multiple engines:
  • Tone.js sampled piano
  • Soundfont piano
  • Custom WebAudio synth preview
• Motif generation: role-based synthesis (bass / drone / ostinato / texture / accents) from parsed MIDI structure

Quick start (local)

# Install frontend deps
npm install

# Install backend deps
cd server && npm install && cd ..

# Run backend (http://localhost:3001)
npm run dev:backend

# Run frontend (Vite prints the URL, typically http://localhost:5173)
npm run dev

How it works (pipeline)

1. User searches for a song
2. Backend searches MIDI sources and returns ranked candidates
3. Backend fetches the selected .mid, validates it, and caches it
4. Frontend parses MIDI into normalized note events
5. User can:
   • Play original MIDI (soundfont/sampler playback), or
   • Generate Motif (procedural Web Audio synthesis derived from structure)

Backend API

• GET /api/midi/search?q=song
• GET /api/midi/fetch?u=url (URL must be encoded)
• GET /api/midi/parse?u=url
• GET /health

Project structure

src/
├── core/           # MotifEngine, RoleMapper
├── midi/           # Parsing + feature extraction
├── services/       # Backend API client
├── synthesis/      # Players + procedural synthesis engine
└── types/          # TypeScript interfaces

server/
├── src/
│   ├── adapters/   # MIDI search adapters (sources)
│   ├── services/   # Search/fetch/parse
│   └── utils/      # Scoring, validation, MIDI helpers
└── cache/          # Downloaded MIDI cache (local dev)

Roadmap

• More sources: add/replace flaky scrapers with more reliable sources
• Better matching: smarter ranking + metadata validation
• Motif controls: “more ominous”, “more dancey”, “more ambient”, etc.
• Deployment: host backend and wire frontend to it via env config