Title: Generating structured music with local search and machine learning
Speaker: Dr. Dorien Herremans
Affiliation: School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science – Queen Mary University
Location: LT 144 Huxley Building
Time: 3:30pm

Abstract. Many state of the art music generation/improvisation systems generate music that sounds good on a note-to-note level. However, these compositions often lack long term structure or coherence. By looking at generating music as an optimization problem, this research overcomes this problem and generates music that has a larger structure. A powerful variable neighbourhood search algorithm (VNS) was developed, which is able to generate a range of musical styles based on it’s objective function, whilst constraining the music to a structural template. In the first stage of the project, an objective function based on rules from music theory was used to generate counterpoint. In this research, a machine learning approach is combined with the VNS in order to generate structured music for the bagana, an Ethiopian lyre. Different ways are explored in which a Markov model can be used to construct quality metrics that represent how well a fragment fits the chosen style (e.g. music for bagana). Current research that aims to extend the objective function with models such as recursive neural networks is also briefly discussed. The approach followed in this research allows us to combine the power of machine learning methods with optimization algorithms.

About the speaker. Dorien Herremans is currently a Marie Skodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at C4DM, Queen Mary University of London. She got her PhD in Operations Research on the topic of Computer Generation and Classification of Music through Operations Research Methods (Compose: Compute – Generating and Classifying Music through Operations Research Methods). She graduated as a commercial engineer in management information systems at the University of Antwerp in 2005. After that, she worked as a Drupal consultant and was an IT lecturer at the Les Roches University in Bluche, Switzerland. She also worked as a mandaatassistent at the University of Antwerp, in the domain of operations management, supply chain management and operations research (OR). Her current research focuses on applications of OR in the field of music.