Towards a Practical Tool for Music Composition: Using Constraint Programming to Model Chord Progressions and Modulations

The article shows the results of research of the mutual influence of the melodic element and the harmonic side in Sergei Rachmaninoff”s musical compositions. The object of the study is presented by the linear functions of harmony, the elements of the harmonic vertical in the melodic line, and the processes of the melodic enrichment of the chords and the harmonic progressions. In a whole set of cases the chord or chord progression become the objects of melodic development through the saturation by means of non-chordal pitches and entire intervallic-chordal strata, through melodic development in separate textural lines. Simultaneously there occurs the saturation of the melody with all the richness of harmonic colors, which becomes possible because of the tight interaction between all the textural strata. Especially important for the issue of the correlation between melodicism and the harmonic processes in the musical texture in general is the problem of phonism. The conclusion is arrived at that all the levels of harmony demonstrate the activity of general tendencies: modal transformations of the harmonic interpretation of melodic units (the reharmonization of the tone, motive, syntagm and theme); the avoidance of traditional progressions; the overcoming of insularity and univocity of harmonic interpretation of the melodic unit; the prevalence of tension and procedurality; attention to the phonic side. The melodic and harmonic motion interacts with each other in the tightest way, and this not only does not impoverish the melody, but endows it with additional colorfulness and capaciousness, at the same time endowing the harmony with special intonational satiety. Keywords: Sergei Rachmaninoff, Rachmaninoff’s melodicism, Rachmaninoff’s harmony, the interaction between the melodic element and harmony.

본 논문에서는 GUI(Graphical User Interface)를 사용하여 사용자가 상호 작용적으로 도형 언어(visual language)의 CMG(Constraint Multiset Grammars) 문법을 기술함으로서 자동으로 공간 파서를 생성하는 공간 파서 생성기 SPG(Spatial Parser Generator)의 구현에 대하여 논한다. 본 시스템의 장점은 다음과 같다. (1) 사용자가 도형 언어의 문법을 정의하고 실제로 파싱하고 싶은 도형 언어를 입력하는데 사용되는 도형 에디터를 가지고 있다. (2) 사용자가 도형을 이용하여 대략적인 CMG 문법을 자동으로 생성한 뒤, 수정하여 최종적인 CMG 문법을 정의하도록 한다. (3) 제약 해소기(Constraint solver)를 가지고 있어서 파싱된 도형 언어들이 그 생성 규칙에 쓰여져 있는 제약을 유지한다. We developed a spatial parser generator, SPG, which can automatically create a spatial parser if CMG(Constraint Multiset Grammars) grammars for a visual language are provided by the user with GUI(Graphical User Interface). SPG has the following features. (1) The user uses a visual editor to define the grammars of a virtual language and draw the visual language which should be parsed. (2) The user roughly defines CMG grammars in a visual wan at first. Then the user modifies them and defines final grammars. (3) Because SPG has a constraint solver, it maintains constraints in the parsed virtual language according to the grammars.

In a previous paper, we proposed the next bar predictor (NBP) model for algorithmically composing melodies. The NBP is much simpler than existing algorithms, yet it fared competitively with the best ones in all criteria (how realistic, how interesting, and how pleasing). In this paper, we propose a further improvement to the NBP by incorporating a melody post-processing technique that would generate a melody that better satisfies music theory and practice. The proposed technique ensures that all sufficiently long notes (based on a predefined threshold) align with a current chord while the shorter notes align with the given scale. As the proposed adjustment technique depends on the note duration threshold, we experimented with various thresholds and eventually decided to use quarter notes. We then compared the outputs of the standard NBP with the modified NBP (MNBP), and the results showed a significant improvement based on actual human evaluations involving music experts and enthusiasts alike. The result in MNBP improved by 9.33, 11.88, and 7.37% using the evaluation criteria of how realistic, how interesting, and how pleasing, respectively. A paired t-test using the 0.05 threshold shows that the improvement in the scores is statistically significant. Finally, since the post-processing technique can, in theory, be applied to the melody generated by any music composition algorithm, the algorithm was applied to Midinet, and surprisingly, even if the output of the Midinet is conditioned using the chord progression, results show that human evaluators prefer the adjusted melody of the Midinet than the original one, from the three criteria – realistic, interesting, and pleasing – the results improved by 20.82, 24.48, and 29.39% respectively. This is further validated to be statistically significant using the 0.05 threshold across all evaluators. Overall, the proposed technique does exhibit good potential for further improving algorithm- composed melodies.

Integrated authoring and performing of mixed music scores, where musicians interact dynamically with computer controlled electronics, is enabled by the Antescofo state-of-the-art software package. Composers are able to plan computerised actions through a dedicated programming language, and performances are then synchronised in real time. AscoGraph is the dedicated graphical interface that allows users to configure Antescofo behaviours and vi-sualise their layout over a mixed music score. This paper presents developments in the direction of increased clarity and coherence of AscoGraph's visualisation of com-puterised action scores. Algorithms for efficient automatic stacking of time-overlapping action blocks are presented, as well as a simplified model for displaying atomic actions. The paper presents the improvements in score readability achieved, as well as the challenges faced towards a complete representation of dynamic mixed scores in the Asco-Graph visual environment.

Generating a complex work of art such as a musical composition requires exhibiting a certain level of creativity. This depends on a variety of factors that are related to the hierarchy of musical language. Music generation has faced challenges by using algorithmic methods and recently is approaching them with deep learning models that are being used in other fields such as computer vision. In this chapter, we place into context the existing relationships between AI-based music composition models and human musical composition and creativity processes. First, we describe the music composition process, and then we give an overview of the recent deep learning models for music generation classifying them according to their relationship with some of the music basic principles: melody, harmony, structure, or music composition processes—instrumentation and orchestration. The relevance of classifying music generation models in those categories helps us to measure and understand how deep learning models deal with the complexity and hierarchy of music. We try to answer some of the most relevant open questions for this task by analyzing the ability of current deep learning models to generate music with creativity or the similarity between AI and human composition processes, among others.

본 연구는 음악소프트웨어 프로그램이 초등학생의 음악창작 과정과 결과에 미치는 영향을 탐색하였다. 연구는 대전 소재 초등학교 4학년 학생 10명을 대상으로, 건반악기와 소프트웨어를 사용하여 음악창작을 하고 그 과정과 결과를 비교분석하였다. 연구 결과 창작과정 범주 중 기보여부, 탐색 방식, 친숙한 선율 사용 등에서 창작도구 간 차이를 보였고, 창작결과 범주에서는 리듬패턴 사용에서 차이를 보였다. 특히 많은 학생들이 Music pro를 사용했을 때 가락 만들기-듣기의 과정을 반복하였다. 이와 같은 연구결과는 음악창작에서 테크놀로지의 활용, 특히 음악능력 하위집단에서 테크노로지의 유용함을 보여주는 것이라 할 수 있다.The development of computer technology and MIDI software has a lot of influence on music education. Especially students can make music composition more easily and efficiently than before. Like this, there are much of research about the effects of technology. But the comparative study of non-technological music compositions and technological music compositions is not yet carried out. So this study analysed melody composition process and product. 4th grade students made melodies by different tools : keyboard and music software program, music pro 4.0. As a results, They showed some meaningful differences in exploration behaviors, rhythmic features. And students felt more comfortable and interested in music pro composition than keyboard composition.

Classical composers such as Wagner, Mahler, Handel, and Debussy, among others, noticed that a space’s acoustic qualities affected their compositions, so they made intuitive arrangements to their performances to suit the space. Some contemporary musicians, on the other hand, incorporate those sonic characteristics as part of their composition. Pauline Oliveros, John Butcher, and Paul Bavister are some composers who produce site-specific works, compositions that include the site’s sound as part of their sound works. This project proposes site stimulation as a methodology to extract Basilica del Voto Nacional’s reverberation, a neo-gothic church in Quito, Ecuador, to produce a site-specific sound work: Composition for a Jazz Quartet and for a Basilica. This research aims not only to use spatial sonic qualities for music composition but also to propose a friendly, day-to-day activity, such as listening to music, as a learning method to acknowledge spatial sound phenomena.

SHEDDING SOME LIGHT ON DONATONI’S LUMEN GUILLERMO LUPPI INTRODUCTION: BRIEF CONTEXTUALIZATION OF LUMEN HE PRODUCTION OF THE ITALIAN COMPOSER Franco Donatoni extends precisely throughout the second half of the twentieth century , his first work being from 1950 (String Quartet no. 1) and his last one from the year 2000 (ESA [In Cauda V], for orchestra). We can divide his works into three different periods, according to his own words. First, the negative period, which extends from his first works until the end of the 60s. Next, the transition period, which occurred during the 70s. Lastly, the positive period, which began in the 80s and continued until the completion of his last work. The present work is from the year 1975, therefore occurring in the middle of the transition period and of his career. The 70s were a very difficult time for Donatoni. With his approach to musical composition, he entered into a crisis: he no longer felt any enthusiasm for serialism, aleatoricism, or combinatory automatism, where the composer had no subjective involvement (Wright 2000). The death of his master and friend, Bruno Maderna, in 1973 also contributed to Donatoni’s depression. As a result, he stopped T 180 Perspectives of New Music composing and became a copyist. We encounter this crisis reflected in the amount of works composed between 1971 and 1974—only six for this otherwise prolific composer. Nevertheless, after the end of the year 1974, he regains his passion for composing. As a result, he adapts his approach towards musical composition, as reflected in the techniques employed and, consequently, in the resulting sonority: his works after 1975 become much more confident and intense in comparison to his first works, in which he cared mostly for the logic of the musical process rather than in its expressiveness. Post 1975, he starts to develop a more ludic, imaginative style, where the first impulse of the musical idea has its own strength and creates its own path through the composition. This is what Donatoni later called L’esercizio ludico dell’invenzione (the ludic exercise of the invention). This exercise manifested a positive point of view in converting the compositional activity not into something hermetic or esoteric, as in his negative period, but instead into a playful space. This change of mindset led Donatoni to compose many works that highly impressed international audiences. Those of utmost importance were: Ash (1976), Jeux and Spiri (both from 1977), and, of course, Lumen, written in the memory of Luigi Dallapiccola, which is less known than the three other works. The materials used by Donatoni in this period were frequently minimal, consisting in a very compressed idea or gesture, which is to be found attached to the continual process of mutations. As we will further explore, the composer classified his procedures in a very precise way, and even if these characteristics are more explicit in his works after the 80s, we most importantly encounter many of them in Lumen. IMPORTANT IDEAS PRESENT IN DONATONI’S POSITIVE PERIOD One of the composers that Donatoni admired the most was Béla Bartók. In one article from the year 1982 entitled “Presenza di Bartók,” the Italian composer esteems the String Quartet no. 4 because of the presence of the following four characteristics: 1. Its cellular exposition and organic growth; 2. Its expansion without a development of the materials; 3. The juxtaposition of organisms, mutations, and evolutions; 4. Static pulsations and tone continuity. Shedding Some Light on Donatoni’s Lumen 181 Even though if this article was written seven years after Lumen, and considering that the first half of the 70s was a time of personal crisis and research of new expressions, in the present work we find most of the characteristics that Donatoni pointed out from Bartók’s string quartet in a somehow prophetic manner. The Italian composer gets further than just an abstraction of a few ideas, and decides to develop them in a very personal way. For example, from the idea of “juxtaposition of organisms” he created the notion of Codes, which are: “compositional tools that serve to keep not only the stability but also the [musical] movement. . . . The dichotomy between the stability...

Refinement tools seek to correct faulty knowledge based systems (KBSs) by identifying and repairing faults that are indicated by training examples for which the KBS gives an incorrect solution. Refinement tools typically use a hill-climbing search to identify suitable repairs. Backtracking search algorithms, developed for constraint satisfaction problems, have been incorporated with an iterative knowledge refinement tool, to solve local maxima problems. This paper investigates how the efficiency of such a tool can be improved and introduces new and general heuristics for ordering training examples. Experimental results reveal that these heuristics applied to static and dynamic ordering of training examples can significantly improve the efficiency of the iterative refinement tool, without increasing the error-rate of the final refined KBS.

DJ (Declarative Java) is an extension of Java that supports constraint programming. On the one hand, DJ can serve as a high-level specification language for Java applets. To construct a graphic user interface (GUI) with DJ, the users only need to specify the components that compose the GUI and the relationships among the components by using constraints. On the other hand, DJ, as a constraint language, improves the current constraint languages in that problems and solutions can be described in the same language. In addition, since DJ is a compiling language that uses Java as the object language for compilation, solutions can be distributed on the WWW as Java applets. We present DJ by examples, aiming at illustrating the power and programming methodology of DJ.

Since 1945, the development of serialism had influenced Western music after World War II. At that time, almost all composers devoted themselves to the creation of serialism. Serialism composition techniques gradually evolved with time, including works in complete control of pitch, rhythm, strength and other factors, as well as the way of thinking. When expressing their creative ideas, some composers became conscious of the alienation with the audiences and limitations of their music. In addition to the composition techniques in serialism, other techniques and thoughts on music included: chance music, electronic music, minimalist music emerged along with serialism; the collage, which through the combination of heterogeneous raw material and techniques spread out the new art form, furthermore via the diverse musical quotations and the juxtaposition of style or texture formed the technique and idea of composition, also used by many composers and prevalence, as well as produced a large number of compositions, especially during the 1960s. This thesis discusses issues from the perspective of collage. First, the author will examine the meaning and application of collage and then explore the historical relationship between collage and visual and music art of twentieth century. Then, to trace the development of collage on the twentieth century music, an analysis on why 1960s composers began to quote past compositions and what factors affecting and causing them to do so is presented. Among collage compositions in music, this thesis uses the third movement of Luciano Berio(1925-2003)’s Sinfonia(1968-69) and the first act of George Rochberg(1918-2005)’s Music for the Magic Theater(1965) as music instances of the collage compositions in music. Not only works of those two contemporary composers who lived in 1960s but in different regions can be used as a typical presentation of collage on the experimental work in music but also their works demonstrate common and different characteristics in term of using Mahler and Mozart as carrier (support, bearer) in music and the idea for the use of collage. Those subtle similarities and differences are of the reason why author select these two music compositions as case study. Finally, this thesis will bring up some reflections on using the technique and idea of collage in music compositions.

Music composition may be used as a tool for the development of creative thinking; it can be considered an “exercise of imagination,” and it can offer new operative ways to develop interdisciplinary processes and to promote communicative, cognitive, cultural, aesthetic, and emotional functions. The author of this chapter introduces a report of educational experiences of music composition with pupils in Primary School where, through socio-constructivist learning, the students acquire new ways of reading and writing music and begin to elaborate a different score for new and original musical compositions, written, composed, and performed directly by children. This musical experience has the goal of using a “creative” teaching/learning process that contributes to the individual’s global education. This musical work on music composition is considered an appealing open project because of its formative nature and various applications: it develops a creative pedagogy which doesn’t transmit a static culture, but rather provides new thinking processes and new interaction modalities.

Interactive exploration of a chaotic oscillator for generating musical signals in real-time concert performance

The Computer Audio Research Laboratory (CARL), now under construction at UCSD's Center for Music Experiment (CME), has been in operation since the spring of 1980. CARL is intended to become a complete, coherent sound system, capable of acting as a tool for digital audio research, music composition, performance, and education. By design, CARL is to be capable of doing virtually anything that is possible with sound. This article outlines the overall design, goals, activities, and current status of the CARL system. The complete CARL system is shown in a schematic way in Fig. 1. The largest box in the diagram contains the waveform synthesis and signal processing functions; these must be implemented in hardware in any real-time system. Performance and control functions may be shared between hardware and software. Composing and analysis software are usually independent of real time, since they generally address problems of music and sound independently of its performance.

The music of Ephraim Amu (1899–1995) is a national treasure in his home country of Ghana. As the architect of the Ghanaian choral idiom, and with a considerable influence on music composition in West Africa, it is inexplicable that the bulk of Amu’s music scores are not available for performance or study nearly 30 years after his passing. In collaboration with Misonu Amu and a team of scholars and choral directors, I am developing a scholarly edition of his complete works. This article explores recurring issues experienced with Amu’s music notations in the editorial process. After a brief description of source materials and the manner in which these scores are employed in practice, attention is focused on the project itself. The methodologies used in the production of 215 newly engraved performance-ready scores are outlined, followed by a discussion of four problem areas encountered with music notation and how these challenges are being addressed. The complete edition will have 7 volumes organised according to voicing, with roughly 30 scores each and will be made accessible online.