Musical Representations
This work finds application in computer-assisted composition (CAC), performance, improvisation, performance and computational musicology. Reflection on the high-level representation of musical concepts and structures supported by original computer languages developed by the team, leads to the conception of models which can be used for musical analysis and creation for composition, performances, and improvisation.
On the musicology side, tools for representation and modeling enable a truly experimental approach that significantly rejuvenates this discipline.
On the creation side, the objective is to design musical companions that interact with composers, musicians, sound engineers, etc. throughout the musical workflow. The software developed has been distributed to a large community of musicians, materializing original forms of thought connected to the particular characteristics of the computer supports they represent (and execute): the final score, its score’s different levels of formal elaboration, its algorithmic generators, its sonic productions, making live interaction possible during a performance, even when improvising. The team integrates symbolic interaction and artificial creativity throughout its work on the modeling of improvisation and the integration of new open and dynamic compositional forms. This research allows advances in artificial intelligence, with models of listening, generative learning, synchronization, and lays the foundation for new technologies of creative agents who can become musical companions with artificial musicality (“machine musicianship”). This prefigures the cooperative dynamics inherent in cyber-human networks and the emergence of forms of human-machine co-creativity.
The team has a long history of collaborations with composers and musicians both from IRCAM and elsewhere. Archives of this work can be found in three volumes of the OM Composer’s Book, guaranteeing its international dissemination and continuity.
Major Themes
- Computer-assisted composition
- Orchestration : computer-assisted orchestration
- Control of synthesis and spatialization, write for time, sound, computer assisted composition
- Mathematics and music
- Computer languages for creation : Open Music, Antescofo
- The dynamics of improvised interaction, co-creativity
- Creative artificial intelligence
- Studies on musical structures in performance
- Studies in connection with therapy
Specialist Areas
Computer-assisted composition and analysis, computer musicology, cognitive musicology, artificial intelligence, computer languages, algebraic and geometric methods, symbolic interactions, languages for synchronous time and tempered time, executable notations
Research topics and related projects
Computer-Assisted Composition
Orchestration via an automatic search of instrumentation and layering instruments approaching a target defined by the composer
Computer Assisted Composition: Writing Sound, Time, and Space
Design models techniques adapted to the creative process, incorporating paradigms for calculations as well as musical interactions and representations
Mathematics and Music
Algebraic Models, Topologies, and Categories in Computational Musicology
Somax2
Somax 2 is an application for musical improvisation and composition. It is implemented in Max and is based on a generative model using a process similar to concatenative synthesis to provide stylistically coherent improvisation, while listening to and adapting to a musician (or any other type of audio or MIDI source) in real-time. The model is operating in the symbolic domain and is trained on a musical corpus, consisting of one or multiple MIDI files, from which it draws its material used for improvisation. The model can be used with little configuration to autonomously interact with a musician, but it also allows manual control of its generative process, effectively letting the model serve as an instrument that can be played in its own right.
European and national projects
ACIDS
Artificial Creative Intelligence and Data Science
ACTOR
Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration
REACH
Raising Co-Creativity in Cyber-Human Musicianship
ACTOR
Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration
COSMOS
Computational Shaping and Modeling of Musical Structures
DAFNE+
Decentralized platform for fair creative content distribution empowering creators and communities through new digital distribution models based on digital tokens
Heart.FM
Maximizing the Therapeutic Potential of Music through Tailored Therapy with Physiological Feedback in Cardiovascular Disease
MERCI
Mixed Musical Reality with Creative Instruments
REACH
Raising Co-Creativity in Cyber-Human Musicianship
Softwares (design & development)
OpenMusic
Antescofo
OMax
Orchids
Musique Lab 2.0
Team
Head Researcher : Gerard Assayag
Researchers & Engineers : Marco Fiorini, Mikhail Malt, Jerome Nika, Carlos Agon Amado, Jean-Louis Giavitto, Karim Haddad, Miller Puckette, Moreno Andreatta, Philippe Esling, Sabina Covarrubias Acosta, Emma Frid
Administrative : Vasiliki Zachari
Compositeur : Claudy Malherbe
PhD Students : Yohann Rabearivelo, David Genova, Nils Demerlé, Giovanni Bindi, , Gonzalo Romero, Ninon Devis
Associated Researcher.s : Georges Bloch
Trainee : Gil Geva
Collaborations
Bergen Center for Electronic Arts (Norvège), CIRMMT/McGill University (Canada), City University London, CNSMDP, Columbia New York, CNMAT/UC Berkeley, Electronic Music Foundation, Gmem, Grame Lyon, École normale supérieure Paris, EsMuC Barcelone, Harvard University, Inria, IReMus – Sorbonne Paris-4, Jyvaskyla University, univ. de Bologne, USC Los Angeles, université Marc Bloch Strasbourg, Pontificad Javeriana Cali, université Paris-Sud Orsay, université de Pise, UPMC Paris, UCSD San Diego, Yale, U. Minnesota, U. Washington.
