Pocket LeitmoTron 1992

Pocket LeitmoTron 1992 is a handy tool designed to provide instant inspiration for aspiring film and game composers.

Jump-start your creativity with prompts in four separate categories:

• Motif - Need a leitmotif for your main character? Just looking for a fresh melody? Randomly generate a sequence of 2 to 8 notes.
• Genre - Get some practice scoring for a huge variety of media types.
• Scene - Set the tone for your composition. Can you make the same motif work in two totally different scenes?
• Instrumentation - Switch up your sound. Don't be afraid of using an unorthodox ensemble!

Each field can be re-rolled individually or all at once using the dice buttons on the right. You can also turn off prompts that you don't need.

Lastly, use the timer to challenge yourself to finish a mockup in a set time.

About this tool

I designed this tool as a practice aid, to give me time-limited composition challenges for media that doesn't exist. That said, you are welcome to use it however you want! Turn off the "genre" and "scene" prompts if you've already got a project to work on. Tweak the motif as much as you want, and reroll to your heart's content. Just get out there and make some music!

Feel free to suggest features, fixes, and especially more prompts in the comments.

There are a few debug controls remaining in this prototype version:

• Press 'R' to restart the program - which doesn't really do much besides reset the output fields.
• Use the '1' and '2' keys to switch between two slightly different algorithms for generating the motif. Algorithm 2 is the default and (in theory) prioritizes  more natural-sounding intervals between notes.

Roadmap

I'm not intending to put a huge amount of development effort into this - after all, the whole point of making it was to get me working on other things. That said, there are a few updates I would like to make in the near future:

• Add a mute button and a second playback tone. As much as I love the authenticity of the crunchy beeps, they are... grating.
• Make some minor tweaks to the motif algorithm.  However, I am planning to stick with diatonic quarter notes. Remember, this is just supposed to give you a jumping off point.
• Add more prompts! Please comment here with anything you'd like to see added. I may also add some weighting so that the more out-there prompts are less common.