Project report

Interactive Drunken Sailor
- the musical construction kit

The Interactive Drunken Sailor is an innovative music construction kit that allows users to create their own version of the sailor's song “Drunken Sailor” from various historical versions. With the help of MEI and Verovio, users can interactively choose between different musical editions and create their own personal remix.

Anna Plaskin demonstrates the use of the Interactive Drunken Sailor

Project participants

Anna Viktoria Katrin Plaksin

Project status

successfully completed

„What shall we do with the drunken sailor?“

Most of us have heard the famous sea shanty “Drunken Sailor” in one form or another. But there is no definitive version of this classic. With the help of the Interactive Drunken Sailor, various recorded versions of the song are presented and it is possible to create your own version from passages from the individual editions.

How it works:

This interactive music construction kit is made possible by the MEI format and Verovio. MEI is an open-source schema that can be used to encode music in XML format for further digital processing. With MEI you can encode different sources into one file, which makes the Interactive Drunken Sailor possible. This works by means of the <app> (i.e. Apparatus) element. Whenever there is a difference in the sources at one point, this is enclosed with the <app> element. Each version of this location is then encoded in an <rdg> (i.e. reading) element, which is enclosed by the <app> element. This makes it possible to save the different versions of this position at one point in the notes. So that you can decide on a version at any point with deviations and thus build your own remix of the sea shanty.

A man is smiling as he points at the interactive music builder on the screen, where he is likely customizing the melody of

Anna Plaskin, Researcher at the Kreativ Institute (KIO), on the left gestures towards the screen and explains the function of the “Interactive Drunken Sailor” to a visitor on the right. In the background is a screen on which a musical notation of the song “What shall we do with a drunken sailor?” can be seen.

Section of the screen with the music notation

Anna Plaskin demonstrates the use of the Interactive Drunken Sailors on the screen

Verovio is a tool to visually display this encoded music or MEI files as notes, which you can then interact with using MEI to create your own Drunken Sailor version.