MAgentA: An architecture for real time automatic composition of background music

Abstract

This paper describes MAgentA (Musical Agent Architecture), which is an Agent that automatically composes background music in real time using the emotional state of the environment within which it is embedded. Its goal is to generate a “film-like music “ out- put for a virtual environment emphasizing the dramatic aspects of such environment. The approach followed in MAgentA is that of dynamically choosing an appropriate composition algorithm, among several others stored in a database, which were previously processed and duly associated to a particular emotional state. MAgentA is in the process of being integrated from an abstract level in the FantasyA Virtual Environment, a wide scale virtual environment game currently being researched with INESC.