My Dissertation

This week on The Pick should've been my review of the EPIC Magneto Design Labs pickups I recently received, however due to a variety of reasons I have had to postpone that review for a week or two, the main reason being the bulk of my life at the moment which is my dissertation, so I thought rather than having a week of no posts I'd chat about that!

The general theme of my dissertation is computer generated music - music which is composed with little or no intervention from a human. I'll be writing about different systems which do this, then evaluating the music that is produced. As well as writing about this, I'm also attempting to build a few of my own music generating systems.

The first type of system I've been researching and attempting to build myself is based around the use of genetic algorithms. In general, these work by saving the musical data in a 'genome' which can later be altered. Darwintunes.org uses Darwin's Survival of the Fittest to alter the genomes, and works in a way which emulates population evolution - sounds crazy but the results it gets are really interesting - definitely check it out.

My genetic algorithm system is similar to Biles' GenJam as it will emulate the way a jazz improvisor learns to improvise. It does this with the help of a human 'mentor' who tells the system which of it's performed generated phrases are good and which are bad. These are then mutated in a variety of ways and hopefully improved. The improved phrases are then saved according to the chord they are played over, and can later be called upon when the system is given a chord sequence to improvise over.

Hopefully you've enjoyed this little taster into what I've been doing recently! Throughout the busy-ness I will aim to continue to post regular content on here as much as is humanly possible.

On another note, I might be in the market for some custom moulded in ear monitors, any suggestions? I usually just play electric guitar, but also sing and play acoustic occasionally, so I would prefer them to be pretty versatile. Recommendations would be great!

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