Human-Competitive Drum Track
Generation in NEAT Drummer
Amy K. Hoover, Michael P. Rosario, and Kenneth O. Stanley
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Central Florida
In What Areas Do Humans Still
Reign Supreme?
•
Mathematics?
•
Games?
•
Engineering?
Answer: Creativity
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Creativity is often called uniquely human
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While computers solve problems routinely…
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Few expect them to produce beauty or depth
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Art, music, literature, poetry
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These are not the traditional province of machines
•
If EC is truly human competitive, it must
An Elegant Theory of Musical
Accompaniment
•
Existing tracks are a
scaffold
upon which
accompaniment is built
•
Demonstrated through percussion tracks:
–
Music is a function over time
–
Desirable drum pattern (accompaniment): f(t)
–
Preexisting instrumental part (scaffold): p(t)
–
Easy way to find f(t): p(t)
–
g(p(t)) = f(t)
•
NEAT Drummer: drum patterns are
functions
of other parts of a
Encoding Drum Tracks From the
Scaffold
O ut pu t L ev elA kind of neural network (evolved)
Scaffold inputs
NEAT Drummer: Interactively
Why Is It Human-Competitive? (1)
•
Widely acknowledged that
computer-generated music fails to capture global
structure (McCormack, 2005; Husbands et al.,
2007)
–
The scaffolding transmits the global sturcture to
the accompaniment: like a human
•
Next: Listen to songs by Barry Taylor
Example: Johnny Cope
•
Follows the global structure
Johnny Cope
•
Follows the global structure
Why Is It Human Competitive? (2)
•
Barry Taylor comments on percussion generated
for
his own songs
:
•
Conclusion: NEAT Drummer surpasses prior results
in the field according to an experienced musician
“Those samples were amazing! … I have heard some ‘auto drum’ software in the past and the result, at least when applied to old traditional tunes, is usually appalling. I must confess that I was a little wary of listening to the results of your application applied to *my* sequences, but your work gives me renewed hope that great quality can indeed be achieved! Keep up the superb work! I wish you continued success in your project...and I'm thrilled to
Why Is NEAT Drummer the Best? (1)
•
Simple theory overcomes a major hurdle: Global structure
•
Experienced musician endorses it above existing “auto-drum”
technology
•
It won the
Best Paper Award
in its field at EvoMUSART 2008: Judged
best by its peers
•
Amy Hoover presented it at the University of Central Florida
Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence in
Physical Sciences,
Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering
: It won
1
stplace
out of 30 entries!
A. K. Hoover, M. P. Rosario, and K. O. Stanley. Scaffolding for interactively evolving novel drum tracks for existing songs. In M. G. et. al., editor,
Proceedings of the Sixth European Workshop on Evolutionary and
Why Is NEAT Drummer the Best? (2)
•
Human-competitive in a uniquely human
domain
•
It brings attention to EC from a broader
audience than exclusively focusing on
technical fields
–
Complements such work well by rounding out the
Additional Information
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EPlex website: http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu
•
More from Barry Taylor (thanks, Barry!):
http://www.contemplator.com/tunebook/index.htm
•
http://members.shaw.ca/tunebook/
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More samples and comparisons: http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/neatmusic
•Publications:
•Amy K. Hoover and Kenneth O. Stanley. Exploiting Functional Relationships in Musical Composition.“
Connection Science Special Issue on Music, Brain, & Cognition (Arbington, UK, 2009)
