This paper suggests three open questions for designing AI for music composition by reflecting on interviews with expert and novice composers. Our questions consider the role of AI as a mediator, the importance of a composer’s originality, and AI for building intuition

Bryan-Kinns, N

Cardinale, S

CHIME ONE DAY WORKSHOP 2023

Ford, C

Wiggins, G

English

Queen Mary Research Online

CHIME ONE DAY WORKSHOP 2023THE OPEN UNIVERSITY, MILTON KEYNES4 DECEMBER 2023Three Open Questions for the Design of AI for Music CompositionCorey Ford1, Sara Cardinale1, Nick Bryan-Kinns2 and Geraint Wiggins31Queen Mary University of London, UK, {c.j.ford, s.cardinale}@qmul.ac.uk2University of the Arts London3Vrije Universiteit Brussel / Queen Mary University of LondonAbstract— This paper suggests three open questions fordesigning AI for music composition by reflecting on inter-views with expert and novice composers. Our questionsconsider the role of AI as a mediator, the importance of acomposer’s originality, and AI for building intuition.Index Terms— AI, Generative AI, Music, InterviewsI. INTRODUCTIONUsing Artificial Intelligence (AI) for composition is an ac-tive area of HCI research [1]. We reflect upon our interviewswe undertook with novices and expert media composers re-garding their compositional process. For the novices, inter-views were centred around an AI-based tool for combiningself and AI-generated blocks of musical notes. For experts,we discussed their real-world music making process. We of-fer open-questions for AI designers of music making tools.II. AI QUESTIONSAI as a Mediator. From the interviews with experts, we foundthat film music’s sound is changing from mainly orchestralinstruments to sampling organic sounds, using synthesisersfor textural elements, and using simpler and shorter motifs.Novices also described being led by choices in the interfacepresented to them in their interviews, e.g., AI-generated mu-sic was often placed in the composition by novices whereverthe interface suggested without their critical reflection, whichis fundamental to creativity [2]. As found in Human-CentredAI (HCAI) more broadly [3], this raises questions on whethera composer’s agency is taken away by technology.How can we design AI tools that support composers’agency?Originality. During the interviews, expert composers men-tioned that music for media is a fiercely competitive indus-try. The presence of numerous aspiring media composersexacerbates this situation, prompting composers to strive foruniqueness in order to distinguish themselves. This is partic-ularly difficult in film music contexts, where directors mightbe requesting specific musical ideas at tension with the com-poser’s own style. The need to find your own compositionalvoice might also be innate to creative practice—many of thenovices in their interviews described trying to recreate musicsimilar to songs they enjoy, yet with their own twist. Thiscan be challenging as many AI tools tend to create music ina certain style, resulting in similar-sounding music.How can we design AI to support people in finding theirown musical voice?Intuition vs Rational Thinking. When making compositionaldecisions, the interviewees, both expert and novice, describetheir choices as instinctual. The particpants describe justplaying around until their music “feels right”. For expertcomposers, these decisions are based on their intuition, builtup over many years of practice. They would explore com-positional techniques which they understood as supportingtheir brief and unique musical style. The novices would alsomake musical choices that seemed right, however, their intu-ition was based on music known to them.How can we design AI to support composer’s intuition?III. SUMMARYWe suggested three open questions for designing AI whichsupports the music composition process, drawing uponhuman-centred perspectives from expert and novice com-posers. Our first question on agency reflects broader HCAIconcerns [3], whereas our other questions reflect the lesserexplored artistic concerns of how musicians can find theirvoice with AI and develop their intuition. We hope thesequestions form the basis for interesting research on the useof AI for music composition.Acknowledgments. Funded by the UKRI Centre for Doc-toral Training in AI and Music (EP/S022694/1). All studiesapproved by QMUL’s ethics committee. Ford and Cardinalecontributed equally.IV. REFERENCES[1] T. Jourdan and B. Caramiaux, “Machine Learning for Musical Expres-sion: A Systematic Literature Review,” in Proceedings ofNew Inter-faces for Musical Expression (NIME), 2023.[2] C. Ford and N. Bryan-Kinns, “Towards a Reflection in Creative Expe-rience Questionnaire,” in Proc. of the 2023 CHI Conference on HumanFactors in Computing Systems, 2023.[3] B. Shneiderman, Human-Centered AI. Oxford University Press, 2022.CHIME ONE DAY WORKSHOP 2023, The Open University, 4 December 2023

Three Open Questions for the Design of AI for Music Composition

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Three Open Questions for the Design of AI for Music Composition

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