Abstract
This paper outlines an approach to real-time music generation using melody and harmony focused agents in a process inspired by jazz improvisation. A harmony agent employs a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) artificial neural network trained on the chord progressions of 2986 jazz ‘standard’ compositions using a network structure novel to chord sequence analysis. The melody agent uses a rule-based system of manipulating provided, pre-composed melodies to improvise new themes and variations. The agents take turns in leading the direction of the composition based on a rating system that rewards harmonic consistency and melodic flow. In developing the multi-agent system it was found that implementing embedded spaces in the LSTM encoding process resulted in significant improvements to chord sequence learning.
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Hutchings, P., McCormack, J. (2017). Using Autonomous Agents to Improvise Music Compositions in Real-Time. In: Correia, J., Ciesielski, V., Liapis, A. (eds) Computational Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design. EvoMUSART 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10198. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55750-2_8
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