AN APPROACH TO MACHINE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSICAL ONTOGENY

This Thesis pursues three main objectives: (i) to use computational modelling to explore how music is perceived, cognitively processed and created by human beings; (ii) to explore interactive musical systems as a method to model and achieve the transmission of musical influence in artificial worlds and between humans and machines; and (iii) to experiment with artificial and alternative developmental musical routes in order to observe the evolution of musical styles. In order to achieve these objectives, this Thesis introduces a new paradigm for the design of computer interactive musical systems called the Ontomemetical Model of Music Evolution - OMME, which includes the fields of musical ontogenesis and memetlcs. OMME-based systems are designed to artificially explore the evolution of music centred on human perceptive and cognitive faculties. The potential of the OMME is illustrated with two interactive musical systems, the Rhythmic Meme Generator (RGeme) and the Interactive Musical Environments (iMe). which have been tested in a series of laboratory experiments and live performances. The introduction to the OMME is preceded by an extensive and critical overview of the state of the art computer models that explore musical creativity and interactivity, in addition to a systematic exposition of the major issues involved in the design and implementation of these systems. This Thesis also proposes innovative solutions for (i) the representation of musical streams based on perceptive features, (ii) music segmentation, (iii) a memory-based music model, (iv) the measure of distance between musical styles, and (v) an impi*ovisation-based creative model

Networks of Liveness in Singer-Songwriting: A practice-based enquiry into developing audio-visual interactive systems and creative strategies for composition and performance.

This enquiry explores the creation and use of computer-based, real-time interactive audio-visual systems for the composition and performance of popular music by solo artists. Using a practice-based methodology, research questions are identified that relate to the impact of incorporating interactive systems into the songwriting process and the liveness of the performances with them. Four approaches to the creation of interactive systems are identified: creating explorative-generative tools, multiple tools for guitar/vocal pieces, typing systems and audio-visual metaphors. A portfolio of ten pieces that use these approaches was developed for live performance. A model of the songwriting process is presented that incorporates system-building and strategies are identified for reconciling the indeterminate, electronic audio output of the system with composed popular music features and instrumental/vocal output. The four system approaches and ten pieces are compared in terms of four aspects of liveness, derived from current theories. It was found that, in terms of overall liveness, a unity to system design facilitated both technological and aesthetic connections between the composition, the system processes and the audio and visual outputs. However, there was considerable variation between the four system approaches in terms of the different aspects of liveness. The enquiry concludes by identifying strategies for maximising liveness in the different system approaches and discussing the connections between liveness and the songwriting process

Creative Support Musical Composition System: a study on Multiple Viewpoints Representations in Variable Markov Oracle

Em meados do século XX, assistiu-se ao surgimento de uma área de estudo focada na geração au-tomática de conteúdo musical por meios computacionais. Os primeiros exemplos concentram-se no processamento offline de dados musicais mas, recentemente, a comunidade tem vindo a explorar maioritariamente sistemas musicais interativos e em tempo-real. Além disso, uma tendência recente enfatiza a importância da tecnologia assistiva, que promove uma abordagem centrada em escolhas do utilizador, oferecendo várias sugestões para um determinado problema criativo. Nesse contexto, a minha investigação tem como objetivo promover novas ferramentas de software para sistemas de suporte criativo, onde algoritmos podem participar colaborativamente no fluxo de composição. Em maior detalhe, procuro uma ferramenta que aprenda com dados musicais de tamanho variável para fornecer feedback em tempo real durante o processo de composição. À luz das características de multi-dimensionalidade e hierarquia presentes nas estruturas musicais, pretendo estudar as representações que abstraem os seus padrões temporais, para promover a geração de múltiplas soluções ordenadas por grau de optimização para um determinado contexto musical. Por fim, a natureza subjetiva da escolha é dada ao utilizador, ao qual é fornecido um número limitado de soluções 'ideais'. Uma representação simbólica da música manifestada como Modelos sob múltiplos pontos de vista, combinada com o autómato Variable Markov Oracle (VMO), é usada para testar a interação ideal entre a multi-dimensionalidade da representação e a idealidade do modelo VMO, fornecendo soluções coerentes, inovadoras e estilisticamente diversas. Para avaliar o sistema, foram realizados testes para validar a ferramenta num cenário especializado com alunos de composição, usando o modelo de testes do índice de suporte à criatividade.The mid-20th century witnessed the emergence of an area of study that focused on the automatic generation of musical content by computational means. Early examples focus on offline processing of musical data and recently, the community has moved towards interactive online musical systems. Furthermore, a recent trend stresses the importance of assistive technology, which pro-motes a user-in-loop approach by offering multiple suggestions to a given creative problem. In this context, my research aims to foster new software tools for creative support systems, where algorithms can collaboratively participate in the composition flow. In greater detail, I seek a tool that learns from variable-length musical data to provide real-time feedback during the composition process. In light of the multidimensional and hierarchical structure of music, I aim to study the representations which abstract its temporal patterns, to foster the generation of multiple ranked solutions to a given musical context. Ultimately, the subjective nature of the choice is given to the user to which a limited number of 'optimal' solutions are provided. A symbolic music representation manifested as Multiple Viewpoint Models combined with the Variable Markov Oracle (VMO) automaton, are used to test optimal interaction between the multi-dimensionality of the representation with the optimality of the VMO model in providing both style-coherent, novel, and diverse solutions. To evaluate the system, an experiment was conducted to validate the tool in an expert-based scenario with composition students, using the creativity support index test

Music Learning with Massive Open Online Courses

Steels, Luc et al.-- Editors: Luc SteelsMassive Open Online Courses, known as MOOCs, have arisen as the logical consequence of marrying long-distance education with the web and social media. MOOCs were confidently predicted by advanced thinkers decades ago. They are undoubtedly here to stay, and provide a valuable resource for learners and teachers alike. This book focuses on music as a domain of knowledge, and has three objectives: to introduce the phenomenon of MOOCs; to present ongoing research into making MOOCs more effective and better adapted to the needs of teachers and learners; and finally to present the first steps towards 'social MOOCs’, which support the creation of learning communities in which interactions between learners go beyond correcting each other's assignments. Social MOOCs try to mimic settings for humanistic learning, such as workshops, small choirs, or groups participating in a Hackathon, in which students aided by somebody acting as a tutor learn by solving problems and helping each other. The papers in this book all discuss steps towards social MOOCs; their foundational pedagogy, platforms to create learning communities, methods for assessment and social feedback and concrete experiments. These papers are organized into five sections: background; the role of feedback; platforms for learning communities; experiences with social MOOCs; and looking backwards and looking forward. Technology is not a panacea for the enormous challenges facing today's educators and learners, but this book will be of interest to all those striving to find more effective and humane learning opportunities for a larger group of students.Funded by the European Commission's OpenAIRE2020 project.Peer reviewe

Investigating the Influence of the Herding Effect on Consumption Experience: The Case of Online Music

Social influence has shown to be incredibly powerful in shaping a consumer’s behaviour. An example of this occurs with the “herding effect”, in which consumers ignore any of their own signals in favour of copying the actions or preferences of the majority. Social influence has been shown to be especially strong in online music consumption, due to the fact that music is highly subjective and can only be ascribed value after it has been experienced; therefore, it is not surprising that strong relationships have been found in research looking at herding effects in music consumption. However, past studies have limited their scope to analyzing the effect across situations, and have so far assumed that the herding effect holds for all consumers, and for all types of music. Therefore, this study looks determine whether there are any potential moderators to the herding effect, such as an individual’s personality or the type of music being consumed. Furthermore, while past studies have looked only at product choice as an outcome variable, this study aims to extend our understanding of the strength of the effect to see if it also impacts consumers’ subsequent evaluations of the consumption experience. Results suggest this effect on the consumption experience does exist, and significant effects are found that suggest online social connectedness and self-construal moderate the impact of the herding effect. These results have implications for marketers in the music industry, and also more generally for anyone looking to understand how personality may moderate social influence effects

The Visualization and Representation of Electroacoustic Music

In Chapters 1 and 2 there are definitions and a review of electroacoustic music, and then visualization generally and as applied to music. Chapter 3 is a review of specific and relevant literature as regards to the visualization of electroacoustic music. Chapter 4 introduces the concepts of imagining as opposed to discovering new sound, and what is important to this research about these terms; in addition what is meant and indicated by them. Chapter 5 deals with the responses that composers currently working have made to the enquiry concerning visualization. In this chapter these responses are dealt with as case studies. In a similar way, Chapter 6 looks at some examples of historical work in electroacoustic music, again as case studies. In Chapter 7 a taxonomical structure for the use of visualization in electroacoustic composition is established and derived from the case study results. Chapter 8 looks at relevant examples of software and how they offer visualization case studies. Chapter 9 looks at the place of the archive in various stages of the compositional process. Chapter 10 investigates the problems of visualizing musical timbre as possible evidence for future strategies. Chapter 11 offers some conclusions and implications as to the main research questions, as well as more specific outlines of potential strategies for the visualization of electroacoustic music

Συμμετοχική επιτέλεση με διαδραστικά συστήματα στο σύγχρονο μουσικό δράμα

Η παρούσα ερευνητική εργασία εστιάζει στο πως μπορεί να επιτευχθεί μια συμμετοχική μουσική παράσταση στο σύγχρονό δράμα, με τη βοήθεια των νέων τεχνολογιών. Στο πρώτο μέρος πραγματοποιείται μια ιστορική αναδρομή στην ερμηνευτική προσέγγιση του δράματος μέσω της μουσικής, αλλά και στην αλληλεπίδραση που έχει αυτή με το κοινό. Το δεύτερο μέρος παρουσιάζει νέα συστήματα μουσικής τεχνολογίας φιλικά προς το χρήστη που δίνουν την ελευθερία στους ερμηνευτές και στο κοινό να διαδράσουν. Αυτό περιλαμβάνει συνεργατικά συστήματα δημιουργίας μουσικής, διαδραστικά συστήματα αυτόματης συνοδείας και ακολουθίας παρτιτούρας και φωνοκωδικοποιητές (vocoder). Το τρίτο μέρος είναι μια μελέτη περίπτωσης του «Οιδίποδα», ενός μουσικού δράματος, όπου συνέθεσα την μουσική σε σκηνοθεσία της Έλλης Παπακωνσταντίνου. Η παράσταση παρουσιάστηκε στο Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) στο Πανεπιστήμιο του Στάνφορντ τον Απρίλιο του 2019. Στο πλαίσιο αυτής της πειραματικής παράστασης χρησιμοποιήσαμε την προαναφερθείσα τεχνολογία για να δώσουμε τους θεατές της παράστασης το ρόλο του χορού της τραγωδίας και παράλληλα να τους εμπλέξουμε ενεργά στη διαδικασία της μουσικής σύνθεσης σε πραγματικό χρόνο.This paper focuses on how to achieve a participatory musical performance with the help of new technologies. In the first part we present a historical retrospective of the dramatic interpretation of music through the use of technology and the interaction that it has with the audience. In the second part we examine new user-friendly sytstems that give the freedom to the performer and the audience to interact. This includes collaborative music creation systems, interactive score followers, automatic accompaniment systems and vocoders. The third part is a case study of "Oedipus", a musical drama directed by Elli Papakonstantinou, presented at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University in April 2019. This production uses the aforementioned technology to transform the audience into the chorus and engage them in the real-time process of music composition

Music as complex emergent behaviour : an approach to interactive music systems

Access to the full-text thesis is no longer available at the author's request, due to 3rd party copyright restrictions. Access removed on 28.11.2016 by CS (TIS).Metadata merged with duplicate record (http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/770) on 20.12.2016 by CS (TIS).This is a digitised version of a thesis that was deposited in the University Library. If you are the author please contact PEARL Admin ([email protected]) to discuss options.This thesis suggests a new model of human-machine interaction in the domain of non-idiomatic musical improvisation. Musical results are viewed as emergent phenomena issuing from complex internal systems behaviour in relation to input from a single human performer. We investigate the prospect of rewarding interaction whereby a system modifies itself in coherent though non-trivial ways as a result of exposure to a human interactor. In addition, we explore whether such interactions can be sustained over extended time spans. These objectives translate into four criteria for evaluation; maximisation of human influence, blending of human and machine influence in the creation of machine responses, the maintenance of independent machine motivations in order to support machine autonomy and finally, a combination of global emergent behaviour and variable behaviour in the long run. Our implementation is heavily inspired by ideas and engineering approaches from the discipline of Artificial Life. However, we also address a collection of representative existing systems from the field of interactive composing, some of which are implemented using techniques of conventional Artificial Intelligence. All systems serve as a contextual background and comparative framework helping the assessment of the work reported here. This thesis advocates a networked model incorporating functionality for listening, playing and the synthesis of machine motivations. The latter incorporate dynamic relationships instructing the machine to either integrate with a musical context suggested by the human performer or, in contrast, perform as an individual musical character irrespective of context. Techniques of evolutionary computing are used to optimise system components over time. Evolution proceeds based on an implicit fitness measure; the melodic distance between consecutive musical statements made by human and machine in relation to the currently prevailing machine motivation. A substantial number of systematic experiments reveal complex emergent behaviour inside and between the various systems modules. Music scores document how global systems behaviour is rendered into actual musical output. The concluding chapter offers evidence of how the research criteria were accomplished and proposes recommendations for future research