MaestroGenesis: Computer-Assisted Musical Accompaniment
Generation
Paul A. Szerlip, Amy K. Hoover, and Kenneth O. Stanley
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Central Florida
Orlando, FL 32816-2362 USA
{paul.szerlip@gmail.com, ahoover@eecs.ucf.edu, kstanley@eecs.ucf.edu}
Abstract
This demonstration presents an implementation of a
computer-assisted approach to music generation called
functional sca↵olding for musical composition (FSMC)
whose representation facilitates creative combination,
exploration, and transformation of musical ideas and
spaces. The approach is demonstrated through a program
called MaestroGenesis with a convenient GUI
that makes it accessible to even non- musicians. Music
in FSMC is represented as a functional relationship between
an existing human composition, or sca↵old, and
a generated accompaniment. This relationship is represented
by a type of artificial neural network called
a compositional pattern producing network (CPPN).
A human user without any musical expertise can then
explore how accompaniment can relate to the sca↵old
through an interactive evolutionary process akin to animal
breeding.
Composing with MaestroGenesis
MaestroGenesis is a program that helps users create
complete polyphonic pieces with only the musical expertise
necessary to compose a simple, monophonic
melody. Users begin creating accompaniments by establishing
a sca↵old, or melody that will provide the
initial rhythmic and harmonic seed for the accompaniment.
The accompaniment is then represented as
a functional transformation of this original sca↵old
through a method called functional sca↵olding for musical
composition (FSMC) (Hoover et al. 2012). FSMC
explots the structure already present in the humancomposed
sca↵old by computing a function that transforms
its structure into the accompaniment.
These FSMC-accompaniments are then bred like animals
might be bred. Once the sca↵old is chosen, a
population of ten accompaniments is displayed. Each
is rated as good or bad by pressing the “thumbs-up”
button (figure 1). By ratings accompaniments with favorable
qualities higher than those without, the next
generation of accompaniments tends to possess similar
qualities to the well-liked parents. Through interactively
evolving these accompaniments, they grow to
reflect the personal inclinations of the user.
Figure 1: MaestroGenesis Candidate Accompaniments.
Accompaniments in MaestroGenesis are
evolved through a process similar to animal breeding.
Candidate accompaniments are evolved ten at a time
in an interative process in which each subsequent generation
inherits traits from the previous population.
Conclusion
MaestroGenesis is a program that facilitates creativity
in music composition through functional sca↵olding for
musical composition (FSMC) (Hoover et al. 2012). Accompaniments
are evolved through a process similar to
animal breeding. The program is availble for download
at http://maestrogenesis.org.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by the National Science
Foundation under grant no. IIS-1002507 and also
by a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Any opinions,
findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed
in this material are those of the author(s) and
do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.
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References
Hoover, A. K.; Szerlip, P. A.; Norton, M. E.; Brindle, T. A.;
Merritt, Z.; and Stanley, K. O. 2012. Generating a complete
multipart musical composition from a single monophonic
melody with functional sca↵olding. In Proc. of the 3rd Intl.
Conf. on Computational Creativity (ICCC-2012).
International Conference on Computational Creativity 2012 225