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
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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)
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