A Genetic Programming Approach to Generating Musical Compositions

Evolutionary algorithms have frequently been applied in the field of computer-generated art. In this paper, a novel approach in the domain of automated music composition is proposed. It is inspired by genetic programming and uses a tree-based domain model of compositions. The model represents musical pieces as a set of constraints changing over time, forming musical contexts allowing to compose, reuse and reshape musical fragments. The system implements a multi-objective optimization aiming for statistical measures and structural features of evolved models. Furthermore a correspondent domain-specific computer language is introduced used to transform domain models to a comprehensive, human-readable text representation and vice versa. The language is also suitable to limit the search space of the evolution and as a composition language for human composers.

[1]  Aniruddh D. Patel.  Music, Language, and the Brain , 2007 .

[2]  Margaret A. Boden,et al.  Creativity and Computers , 1995 .

[3]  Charles Fox,et al.  Genetic Hierarchical Music Structures , 2006, FLAIRS.

[4]  David B. Fogel,et al.  Evolutionary Computation: Towards a New Philosophy of Machine Intelligence , 1995 .

[5]  Margaret A. Boden,et al.  Creativity and Art: Three Roads to Surprise , 2010 .

[6]  Agostinho C. Rosa,et al.  Music composition using genetic evolutionary algorithms , 2000, Proceedings of the 2000 Congress on Evolutionary Computation. CEC00 (Cat. No.00TH8512).

[7]  Ryan A. McIntyre,et al.  Bach in a box: the evolution of four part Baroque harmony using the genetic algorithm , 1994, Proceedings of the First IEEE Conference on Evolutionary Computation. IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence.

[8]  Bruce Jacob,et al.  Composing with Genetic Algorithms , 1995, ICMC.

[9]  J. Biles.  Improvizing with Genetic Algorithms: GenJam , 2007 .

[10]  Bruce Jacob,et al.  Algorithmic composition as a model of creativity , 1996, Organised Sound.

[11]  Brad Johanson,et al.  GP-Music: An Interactive Genetic Programming System for Music Generation with Automated Fitness Raters , 2007 .

[12]  Elena Deza,et al.  Encyclopedia of Distances , 2014 .

[13]  Riccardo Poli,et al.  A Field Guide to Genetic Programming , 2008 .

[14]  Andrew Horner,et al.  Harmonization of Musical Progressions with Genetic Algorithms , 1995, ICMC.

[15]  Manuel Alfonseca Moreno,et al.  Automatic composition of music by means of grammatical evolution , 2002 .

[16]  N. Geschwind.  Language and the brain. , 1972, Scientific American.

[17]  John A. Biles,et al.  GenJam: A Genetic Algorithm for Generating Jazz Solos , 1994, ICMC.

[18]  David B. Fogel,et al.  Evolutionary Computation: Toward a New Philosophy of Machine Intelligence (IEEE Press Series on Computational Intelligence) , 2006 .

[19]  Gerhard Nierhaus,et al.  Algorithmic Composition: Paradigms of Automated Music Generation , 2008 .

[20]  Nick Collins,et al.  Introduction to Computer Music , 2010 .

[21]  Riccardo Poli,et al.  Genetic Programming: An Introduction and Tutorial, with a Survey of Techniques and Applications , 2008, Computational Intelligence: A Compendium.

[22]  David E. Goldberg,et al.  Genetic Algorithms and Computer-Assisted Music Composition , 1991, ICMC.

[23]  Rodney Waschka,et al.  Composing with Genetic Algorithms: GenDash , 2007 .

[24]  Damon Horowitz,et al.  Generating Rhythms with Genetic Algorithms , 1994, AAAI.