Working toward computer generated music traditions

Abstract

I will discuss research aimed at making computers intelligent and sensitive enough to working with music data, whether acoustic or symbolic. Invariably, this includes _a lot_ of work in applying machine learning to music collections in order to divine distinguishing and identifiable characteristics of practices that defy strict definition. Many of the resulting machine music listening systems appear to be musically sensitive and intelligent, but their fraudulent ways can be revealed when they are used to create music in the styles they have been taught to identify. Such "evaluation by generation” is a powerful way to gauge the generality of what a machine has learned to do. I will present several examples, focusing in particular on our work applying deep LSTM networks to modelling folk music transcriptions, and ultimately generating new music traditions.