Mozart and Midi

[Torsten Anders]

On Mon, 2003-06-02 at 15:25, Maarten van den Dungen wrote:
> What kind of functionality do you need and what are you going to use it for?

Hi,

My Ph.D. is about constraint-based music composition (actually,
'multi-paradigm programming' better suits my intentions, but constraint
programming is the core of my project). 

As part of my PhD, I intend to program an Oz extension which allows the
user to freely describe a music score in a high-level way by writing Oz
code. If the user looks for traditional music, he may, e.g., write rules
on harmony, voice leading etc. However, my approach will not be limited
to a certain musical style. 

My main interest is to design abstractions (e.g. functions) which help
to declare music descriptions. Just to mention a few aspects: How to
apply certain constraints only for certain parts of the score (e.g. in
traditional counterpoint there are special cadence rules for the end of
a phrase)? How to handle a changing set of constraints (e.g. changing
rules dependent on score time). How can widespread deterministic
computer assisted composition strategies/rules with a nondeterministic
element (e.g. a markov chain approach or/and a context free grammar for
pitches) be combined with other strategies/rules (e.g. further harmonic
rules) by using constraint programming? How can deterministic means of
traditional algorithmic composition (e.g. pattern streams or envelopes)
be turned into nondeterministic means to be combine-able with other
rules? How to define musical form (not only parameters, as pitches) in a
rule based way? 

I want to output solution scores to various formats, including MIDI.
Because I concentrate on constraint search, I probably only need
MIDI-file output, i.e. no real-time MIDI-out. In case I later extend my
project to music analysis I will need MIDI-file input as well.

Kindest regards and thanks for your interest,
Torsten


-- 
Torsten Anders
Sonic Arts Research Centre
Queens University Belfast
Tel: +44 28 9027 4831 (office)
     +44 28 9066 7439 (private)


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