Machine Musicianship

by Robert Rowe

Musicians begin formal training by acquiring a body of musical concepts commonly known as musicianship. These concepts underlie the musical skills of listening, performance, and composition. Like humans, computer music programs can benefit from a systematic foundation of musical knowledge. This book explores the technology of implementing musical processes such as segmentation, pattern processing, and interactive improvisation in computer programs. It shows how the resulting applications can be used to accomplish tasks ranging from the solution of simple musical problems to the live performance of interactive compositions and the design of musically responsive installations and Web sites. Machine Musicianship is both a programming tutorial and an exploration of the foundational concepts of musical analysis, performance, and composition. The theoretical foundations are derived from the fields of music theory, computer music, music cognition, and artificial intelligence. The book will be of interest to practitioners of those fields, as well as to performers and composers.The concepts are programmed using C++ and Max. The accompanying CD-ROM includes working versions of the examples, as well as source code and a hypertext document showing how the code leads to the program's musical functionality.

Genres: Music

411 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 2001

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been sitting on my bookshelf for at least 16 years, and I’ve finally read it.

It’s a collection of algorithms and approaches to processing music. Sort of like a cookbook, but with plenty of discussion around what’s been tried in the past. It goes into detail (with C++ and Max code) around topics such as: segmenting sound, various kind of pattern detection, using rules, various kinds of machine learning, live performance.