An Application for Evolutionary Music Composition Using Autoencoders

Robert Neil McArthur*, Charles Patrick Martin

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

    2 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This paper presents a new interactive application that can generate music according to a user’s preferences inspired by the process of biological evolution. The application composes sets of songs that the user can choose from as a basis for the algorithm to evolve new music. By selecting preferred songs over successive generations, the application allows the user to explore an evolutionary musical space. The system combines autoencoder neural networks and evolution with human feedback to produce music. The autoencoder component is used to capture the essence of musical structure from a known sample of songs in a lower-dimensional space. Evolution is then applied over this representation to create new pieces based upon previously generated songs the user enjoys. In this research, we introduce the application design and explore and analyse the autoencoder model. The songs produced by the application are also analysed to confirm that the underlying model has the ability to create a diverse range of music. The application can be used by composers working with dynamically generated music, such as for video games and interactive media.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationArtificial Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design - 10th International Conference, EvoMUSART 2021, Held as Part of EvoStar 2021, Proceedings
    EditorsJuan Romero, Tiago Martins, Nereida Rodríguez-Fernández
    PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
    Pages443-458
    Number of pages16
    ISBN (Print)9783030729134
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2021
    Event10th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design, EvoMUSART 2021 held as Part of EvoStar 2021 - Virtual, Online
    Duration: 7 Apr 20219 Apr 2021

    Publication series

    NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
    Volume12693 LNCS
    ISSN (Print)0302-9743
    ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

    Conference

    Conference10th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design, EvoMUSART 2021 held as Part of EvoStar 2021
    CityVirtual, Online
    Period7/04/219/04/21

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