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Swarm Theory Applied to Music

Posted by timothy on from the fire-ants dept.

JoeCotellese writes "There is an article in Discover magazine about computer scientist/musician Tim Blackwell and his Swarm Music software. This software creates improvisational music based on models of swarming and flocking. The observation was made that interaction among musicians is interdependent and yet independent and this dynamic parallels flock dynamics. Computer generated music has been around for a while but according to his web site, this project was the first application of swarm theory to music. Sample MP3s are available on his website."

6 of 26 comments (clear)

  1. Quantification of Determinism in Music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It would be interesting to analyze this new music using iterated function systems as described in the seminal work by Meloon and Sprott. The method characterises the organization of the music which may, or may not, occur in this new music generated by 'flock theory'.

  2. MP3? by manual_overide · · Score: 2, Interesting

    All I found were real audio files.

    --
    If bad puns were like deli meat, this would be the wurst
  3. Douglas Adams would be proud! by hdurdle · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Fantastic! The main character in "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency", Richard MacDuff, is a programmer whose current project is converting numerical data into sounds. He discusses this in some mathematical detail at times. And MacDuff has written an article on the relationship between music, mathematics, and beauty, and which gets quoted extensively.

  4. what is music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Unfortunately, the definition of music versus noise is subject to the opinion of the listener. I don't think I'm going to be listening to a CD of swarming violins, bleeps, bloops, and marimbas anytime soon. However, I do detect structure and 'following' in the audio clips. If some concrete theme could be established we might actually have a winner.

  5. Re:Similar Project by mivok · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wow.. that sounds amazing, especially considering its computer generated. So now I have to tell everyone that a computer can not only beat me at board games, but it can improvise better than I can as well :(

    Admittedly, jazz is a lot more random than other styles, and the chords for some (all?) of the songs were predetermined, but still, its the first computer generated music I've heard that didnt sound 'weird', unlike the ones from the toplevel article here, parts of which sound like they would make really good intros/backings to a tune, but needs something to make the music more melodic (I guess that where the GA comes in).

    I'd be interested to know how many generations it takes for most of the tunes, and what fitness function he used (or if it was just.. listen to several and pick the best few).. guess its reading time :)

  6. Musical structure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Blackwell and Bentley decided to translate the language of music into a 3-D space, with a dimension each for pitch, duration, and volume

    I humbly propose that this is an overly simplified way of looking at music. It may be that the reporter missed the significant details of the project, and I freely admit that my experience (and interest) in jazz music is awfully limited, but still, I claim that music must be more than this. There are well established features of music not even hinted at in the article, like repetition of small themes or larger parts of the music, or balancing the features in the beginning of the piece against those at the end. Even simple harmonic progressions sound unlikely to emerge from this system.