ImprovGenerator : Online Grammatical Induction for On-the-Fly Improvisation Accompaniment

Kris M. Kitani, and Hideki Koike

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

We propose an online generative algorithm to enhance musical expression via intelligent improvisation accompaniment.Our framework called the ImprovGenerator, takes a livestream of percussion patterns and generates an improvisedaccompaniment track in real-time to stimulate new expressions in the improvisation. We use a mixture model togenerate an accompaniment pattern, that takes into account both the hierarchical temporal structure of the liveinput patterns and the current musical context of the performance. The hierarchical structure is represented as astochastic context-free grammar, which is used to generateaccompaniment patterns based on the history of temporalpatterns. We use a transition probability model to augmentthe grammar generated pattern to take into account thecurrent context of the performance. In our experiments weshow how basic beat patterns performed by a percussioniston a cajon can be used to automatically generate on-the-flyimprovisation accompaniment for live performance.

Citation:

Kris M. Kitani, and Hideki Koike. 2010. ImprovGenerator : Online Grammatical Induction for On-the-Fly Improvisation Accompaniment. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1177827

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{Kitani2010,
 abstract = {We propose an online generative algorithm to enhance musical expression via intelligent improvisation accompaniment.Our framework called the ImprovGenerator, takes a livestream of percussion patterns and generates an improvisedaccompaniment track in real-time to stimulate new expressions in the improvisation. We use a mixture model togenerate an accompaniment pattern, that takes into account both the hierarchical temporal structure of the liveinput patterns and the current musical context of the performance. The hierarchical structure is represented as astochastic context-free grammar, which is used to generateaccompaniment patterns based on the history of temporalpatterns. We use a transition probability model to augmentthe grammar generated pattern to take into account thecurrent context of the performance. In our experiments weshow how basic beat patterns performed by a percussioniston a cajon can be used to automatically generate on-the-flyimprovisation accompaniment for live performance.},
 address = {Sydney, Australia},
 author = {Kitani, Kris M. and Koike, Hideki},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1177827},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 keywords = {Machine Improvisation, Grammatical Induction, Stochastic Context-Free Grammars, Algorithmic Composition},
 pages = {469--472},
 title = {ImprovGenerator : Online Grammatical Induction for On-the-Fly Improvisation Accompaniment},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2010/nime2010_469.pdf},
 year = {2010}
}