An artificial-chemistry approach to generating polyphonic musical phrases

Abstract

Many techniques in the evolutionary-computing and artificial-life fields have been applied to generating musical phrases. Recently, artificial chemistries, which are virtual models of chemical systems, have come into use for the purpose. In this paper, we attempt to produce polyphonic phrases using an artificial chemistry. The molecules and chemical equations are so designed as to implement a basic set of rules in counterpoint, a technique to compose polyphonic music. We perform a preliminary experiment using a simulator for the artificial chemistry; in the experiment, some good polyphonic phrases are generated, which confirms that the present approach is promising. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.