Using machine-learning methods for musical style modeling

The ability to construct a musical theory from examples presents a great intellectual challenge that, if successfully met, could foster a range of new creative applications. Inspired by this challenge, we sought to apply machine-learning methods to the problem of musical style modeling. Our work so far has produced examples of musical generation and applications to a computer-aided composition system. Machine learning consists of deriving a mathematical model, such as a set of stochastic rules, from a set of musical examples. The act of musical composition involves a highly structured mental process. Although it is complex and difficult to formalize, it is clearly far from being a random activity. Our research seeks to capture some of the regularity apparent in the composition process by using statistical and information theoretic tools to analyze musical pieces. The resulting models can be used for inference and prediction and, to a certain extent, to generate new works that imitate the style of the great masters.