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Automatic music composition using answer set programming

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2011

GEORG BOENN ,
MARTIN BRAIN ,
MARINA DE VOS  and
JOHN FFITCH
GEORG BOENN
Affiliation:
Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, CF37 1DL, UK (e-mail: gboenn@glam.ac.uk)
MARTIN BRAIN
Affiliation:
Department of Computer Science, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK (e-mail: mjb@cs.bath.ac.uk, mdv@cs.bath.ac.uk, jpff@cs.bath.ac.uk)
MARINA DE VOS
Affiliation:
Department of Computer Science, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK (e-mail: mjb@cs.bath.ac.uk, mdv@cs.bath.ac.uk, jpff@cs.bath.ac.uk)
JOHN FFITCH
Affiliation:
Department of Computer Science, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK (e-mail: mjb@cs.bath.ac.uk, mdv@cs.bath.ac.uk, jpff@cs.bath.ac.uk)
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Abstract

Music composition used to be a pen and paper activity. These days music is often composed with the aid of computer software, even to the point where the computer composes parts of the score autonomously. The composition of most styles of music is governed by rules. We show that by approaching the automation, analysis and verification of composition as a knowledge representation task and formalising these rules in a suitable logical language, powerful and expressive intelligent composition tools can be easily built. This application paper describes the use of answer set programming to construct an automated system, named Anton, that can compose melodic, harmonic and rhythmic music, diagnose errors in human compositions and serve as a computer-aided composition tool. The combination of harmonic, rhythmic and melodic composition in a single framework makes Anton unique in the growing area of algorithmic composition. With near real-time composition, Anton reaches the point where it can not only be used as a component in an interactive composition tool but also has the potential for live performances and concerts or automatically generated background music in a variety of applications. With the use of a fully declarative language and an “off-the-shelf” reasoning engine, Anton provides the human composer a tool which is significantly simpler, more compact and more versatile than other existing systems.

Keywords

Answer set programmingApplications of ASPMusic compositionAlgorithmic compositionHarmonic and melodic compositionDiagnosis
Type
Regular Papers
Information
Theory and Practice of Logic Programming , Volume 11 , Special Issue 2-3: The 24th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2008) , March 2011 , pp. 397 - 427
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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