A cognition-analogous approach to early-stage creative ideation support in music composition software

Examination of the underlying principles of creativity reveal theoretical aspects that have not been well explored in creativity facilitation software. Most significantly of these, there has been little investigation into exploiting the distinctions between early- and late-stage creative processes and the attendant differences in cognitive processing active at those times, nor into employing the structural scaffolding embedded within creative works and the manner in which these can be extracted and harnessed to define levels of abstraction through which the material can be viewed and manipulated. The Wheelsong project was conceived to exploit these principles, in the service of devising more creatively facilitative music composition tools, by focusing on these earlier, exploratory stages of the creative process, and by privileging structure over minutiae, in alignment with the mode of cognition (and corresponding user needs) that dominate the exploratory phase. Explorations conducted with Wheelsong demonstrate that the platform embraces broad stylistic and cultural ranges of output. Experiments comparing the creative merits of early-stage, fragmentary outputs produced by Wheelsong against those produced by traditional representation schemes show a substantial improvement in both subjective quality and diversity indicators adhering to the structurally produced candidates, as measured by human judges.