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Exploring Musical Creativity with Functional Scaffolding

#GHC13. Exploring Musical Creativity with Functional Scaffolding. Amy K. Hoover, Paul A. Szerlip , and Kenneth O. Stanley Department of EECS University of Central Florida 10/3/2013. 2013. About Me. 5 th year Ph.D. candidate in CS at the University of Central Florida

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Exploring Musical Creativity with Functional Scaffolding

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  1. #GHC13 Exploring Musical Creativity with Functional Scaffolding Amy K. Hoover, Paul A. Szerlip, and Kenneth O. Stanley Department of EECS University of Central Florida 10/3/2013 2013

  2. About Me • 5th year Ph.D. candidate in CS at the University of Central Florida • Graduating in August and looking for postdocs! • So if you know anyone looking… • ahoover@eecs.ucf.edu • Musician

  3. Motivation • What do we appreciate in music? • In other mediums: Appreciate symmetry, repetition, variation on a theme • Art, architecture, and even human beauty

  4. Motivation • Makes sense we would appreciate these relationships in music too • Hypothesis: Minimalist approach to music generation can help understand music appreciation • Developed such a minimalist approach • Exploits symmetry, repetition, and variation on a theme

  5. Outline • The minimalist approach: Functional Scaffolding for Musical Composition (FSMC) • Example musical outputs • Implications for music appreciation

  6. Functional Scaffolding for Musical Composition (FSMC) • Idea: • Based on implicit mathematical properties of music • Exploits that music is a function of time • Parts in a pieceare functionally related

  7. Generating Accompaniment with FSMC • Formally: Preexisting musical parts (scaffold), f(t) • Desirable melodic pattern (accompaniment): g(t) g(t) = f(t) =

  8. Generating Accompaniment with FSMC • How can we find g(t) given f(t)? g(t) = ? f(t) =

  9. Generating Accompaniment with FSMC • Helper function h that relates f(t) to g(t) • Easier than searching for g(t) alone: h(f(t)) = g(t) g(t) = h(f(t)) f(t) =

  10. Search for Transformation Function • Interactive evolutionary computation • Like dog breeding • Selected for “appealing” traits • Large variety of traits and breeds … … …

  11. Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) Children Parent

  12. Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) Children Parent

  13. Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) Children Parent

  14. MaestroGenesis hi(f(t)) = hj(f(t)) = hk(f(t)) = h…(f(t)) =

  15. IEC in MaestroGenesis

  16. IEC in MaestroGenesis

  17. IEC in MaestroGenesis

  18. IEC in MaestroGenesis

  19. IEC in MaestroGenesis

  20. FSMC Results: Song 2Marie E. Norton

  21. FSMC Results: Scarborough FairTrevor A. Brindle • Scarborough Fair • Polyphonic scaffold: • Arranged and used with permission by Barry Taylor • Scaffold and monophonic accompaniment:

  22. From Music Generation to Music Appreciation • Listener studies (Hoover, Szerlip, and Stanley 2011a,b) show listeners consider results plausibly human • Despite no musical knowledge • Hypothesis (we can learn about music appreciation) is supported by the evidence • Interesting insight: Potential to yield satisfying accompaniments that defy standard practices • At least maintain a functional relationship

  23. From Music Generation to Music Appreciation • Composers have long incorporated functional elements in their pieces • Translations, inversions, reflections • Logarithmic, modular, set theory concepts • Composers use such functional elements all the time • FSMC theory unifies all these techniques under a simple principle: functional relationships

  24. From Music Generation to Music Appreciation • May partially explain appreciation of musical style that does not follow conventional rules • The harder it is to perceive how one part is functionally related to another, the less immediately pleasing that piece may be

  25. Learning to Appreciate New Music • Why we can intuitively appreciate a good riff or jingle (i.e. the relationships are easier to perceive) • Why it takes more effort to appreciate art music: learning new functional relationships • Sonification of nonauditory data, atonal music

  26. Learning to Appreciate New Music • Initially, brain is unfamiliar with the complex and new relationships • E.g. atonal music • Over time, the listener learns the kinds of transformations that are typical in the new context

  27. When to Break the Rules • When to break the rules is a very hard question • Music theory provides heuristics for composing certain types of music • (e.g. fugues, walking bass lines) • Good musicians know when they can break these rules • Insight of this theory: • Arule is well-broken if it still preserves a perceptible functional relationship

  28. Conclusions • General theory follows directly from taking a minimalist approach to music generation • Can both generate music and illuminate why humans appreciate it • Of course there are more elements to music appreciation • FSMC isolates a single phenomenon so that the full implication of that phenomenon can be tested

  29. Contact • Website: http://amykhoover.com • Email: ahoover@eecs.ucf.edu • Looking for postdoc position starting August, 2014!

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