Professor Nick Collins nick.collins@durham.ac.uk
Professor
A funny thing happened on the way to the formula: Algorithmic composition for musical theatre
Collins, Nick
Authors
Abstract
Algorithmic composition methods must prove themselves within real-world musical contexts to more firmly solidify their adoption in musical practice. The present project is an automatic composing program trained on a corpus of songs from musical theater to create novel material, directly generating a scored lead sheet of vocal melody and chords. The program can also produce output based upon phonetic analysis of user-provided lyrics. The chance to undertake the research arose from a television documentary funded by Sky Arts that considered the question of whether current-generation, computationally creative methods could devise a new work of musical theater (the research described here provides but one strand within that project). Allied with the documentary, the resultant musical had a two-week West End run in London and was itself broadcast in full. Evaluation of the project included both design feedback from a musical theater composer team, and critical feedback from audiences and media coverage. The research challenges of the real-world context are discussed, with respect to the compromises necessary to get such a project to the stage.
Citation
Collins, N. (2016). A funny thing happened on the way to the formula: Algorithmic composition for musical theatre. Computer Music Journal, 40(3), 41-57. https://doi.org/10.1162/comj_a_00373
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Jul 9, 2016 |
Online Publication Date | Sep 1, 2016 |
Publication Date | Sep 1, 2016 |
Deposit Date | Sep 13, 2016 |
Publicly Available Date | Oct 4, 2016 |
Journal | Computer Music Journal |
Print ISSN | 0148-9267 |
Electronic ISSN | 1531-5169 |
Publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 40 |
Issue | 3 |
Pages | 41-57 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1162/comj_a_00373 |
Publisher URL | https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/34 |
Files
Accepted Journal Article
(1.8 Mb)
PDF
Copyright Statement
This is a manuscript version of the article, which has been accepted for publication in Computer Music Journal.
Published Journal Article
(935 Kb)
PDF
You might also like
Jack Code's Rebellion
(2022)
Book Chapter
OK Computer Analysis: An Audio Corpus Study of Radiohead
(2022)
Report
Remixing AIs: mind swaps, hybrainity, and splicing musical models
(2020)
Conference Proceeding
Composition in the Age of AI
(2020)
Journal Article
The Future of Rhythm
(2020)
Book Chapter
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search