Supporting musical composition by externalizing the composer's mental space

Abstract

In the field of design and creativity support, "externalization of mental space" has been recognized as an important challenge. In this paper, we tackle this challenge on musical composition, which is one of the important human creative activities. In our research, we focus on the analysis of cognitive processes in musical composition. That is, we analyze what the cognitive processes in musical composition are like and how the process is affected when a representation of information is changed. For this research, we propose a musical composition supporting system named "MACSS (MAcroscopic Composition Supporting System)" which offers a spatial representation of music to a composer to support his/her composition process. Comparing with ordinary musical editors, which give chronological (1-dimensional, score-metaphored) representation, this system provides a macroscopic view by locating phrases on the 2-dimensional space. We have investigated how the cognitive process changes when the spatial representation is introduced, i.e., the representation of information is changed. Moreover, we have analyzed the observed change microscopically, especially the processes of "mental fixation" and "mental leap". We have found how the spatial representation triggers mental leap escaping from mental fixation in musical composition.