I’ve always been fascinated by arts and science. But, what was getting me excited most was their combination and one of my ambitions is to achieve that. As a computer scientist I couldn’t find a better way to fulfill this ambition. I finally chose my MSc project which combines my two passions. Algorithms and music.

As the title suggests, my project is to research and develop a system which will make use of machine learning and music information retrieval so as to understand and then generate music automatically, simulating an improvising musician. In short, a system which will improvise in a jam session.

There are several ideas to begin with. The first milestone is to construct a system which will use simple midi input and fixed tempo, like the system suggested in [1]. However, the goal is to be able to use real instruments and beat to be extracted by rhythm instruments (take a look at [2] and [3] for real-time feature extraction).

Here is a list of the tools and languages i am planning to use:

• ChucK and weakinator.
• Pure Data and/or Max/MSP for interaction, programming, generation (using it with max for live).
• WEKA for machine learning.
• Ableton for audio synthesis (generative part)

Feel free to leave a comment, to make a suggestion or just tell me what you think.

References

1. Kitahara, Tetsuro, Naoyuki Totani, R. Tokuami, and H. Katayose. 2010. €œBayesianBand: Jam Session System Based on Mutual Prediction by User and System.€ Entertainment Computing €“ICEC 2009

2. Stark, A.M., and M.D. Plumbley. 2009. “Real-time chord recognition for live performance.”in Proceedings of International Computer Music Conference.

3. Stark, Adam M, Matthew E P Davies, and Mark D Plumbley. 2009. “REAL-TIME BEAT-SYNCHRONOUS ANALYSIS OF MUSICAL AUDIO Centre for Digital Music Queen Mary University of London London , United Kingdom.” Analysis 1-6.