Grammatical Music Composition with Dissimilarity Driven Hill Climbing

• Published in: Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design Vol. 9596; pp. 110 - 125
• Main Authors: Loughran, Róisín, McDermott, James, O’Neill, Michael
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 01.01.2016; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Algorithmic composition; Algorithms & data structures; Artificial intelligence; Grammar; Hill-climbing; User interface design & usability
• ISBN: 9783319310077; 3319310070
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-31008-4_8

An algorithmic compositional system that uses hill climbing to create short melodies is presented. A context free grammar maps each section of the resultant individual to a musical segment resulting in a series of MIDI notes described by pitch and duration. The dissimilarity between each pair of segments is measured using a metric based on the pitch contour of the segments. Using a GUI, the user decides how many segments to include and how they are to be distanced from each other. The system performs a hill-climbing search using several mutation operators to create a population of segments the desired distances from each other. A number of melodies composed by the system are presented that demonstrate the algorithm’s ability to match the desired targets and the versatility created by the inclusion of the designed grammar.