any sentence, sung by a rule from about 1026.

Around 1026, a monk named Guido of Arezzo put a procedure into a music textbook: give each vowel a note, and sing what comes out. He called it unheard-of until now.

Then he loosened it three times. He added a second row of vowels, so the reader could wander a little more freely: each vowel now gets a menu of notes. He left the method behind at the end of his hymn, to make the tune fit its mode. And he told the reader to choose the better notes, fill the gaps and stretch what's cramped.

He never says the rule can replace a composer. My reading is that he was after something else: music you can get from the page, without someone who already knows it standing next to you.

• singstarts a take. the whole take is set before it starts.
• wanderthe one knob. turns on row 2: each vowel gets a menu, and dice choose.
• roll againnew dice. notes you picked by hand stay.
• tap a syllablewith wander on, moves it round its menu, then back to the dice.
• loopsings again after a short gap, with new dice each time.
• sharecopies a link to the take you're hearing.
• save wavrenders the take in your browser and downloads it.

With wander on, each note but the last gets one roll of a six-sided die. With three options, 1–2 picks the first, 3–4 the second and 5–6 the third. With two options, 1–3 picks the first and 4–6 the second. The last note goes to G, with no roll. Nothing is smoothed.

• …ita ad cantum redigitur omne, quod scribitur. Everything that is written can be turned into song.
• …ut tibi paullo liberius liceat evagari… So that you may wander a little more freely.
• In sola enim ultima parte hoc argumentum reliquimus… In the last part alone, we left this method behind, to make the melody fit its mode.
• …eligas, hiantia suppleas, compressa resolvas… Choose the better notes, fill the gaps, stretch what's cramped.

From Micrologus, ch. 17, with the tuning from ch. 3, in Gerbert's text on Fenyx. The translations are my own.