A tool for composing short music pieces by means of breeding

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a support system for music composition based on simulated breeding, which is a type of interactive evolutionary computing optimization technique. In our prototype system, named Sbeat (Simulated Breeding Evolutionary Algorithm Tool), each individual in the population is a short music section of 16 beats including three parts guitar, bass and drums. The melody and rhythm are generated by a type of recursive algorithm. from genetic information. To select the favorite piece among the scores displayed on the screen, the user listens to the sounds and decides which should be the parents to reproduce offspring in the next generation. Embedding some domain-specific functions, we can build a useful tool to make it easier for a beginner to compose his/her favorite music pieces.