Research on Automatic Arrangement

研究 自動編曲 音楽情報科学

Abstract

Recreating a performance form or melody from an existing piece of music to suit a specific purpose is widely practiced in jazz, popular music, classical music, and other forms of music. Arranging music, like composing, requires special knowledge and experience, and there is widespread research aimed at using computers to assist in this process. There are various methodologies for arrangement depending on the subject and purpose, and our laboratory has been involved in research on automatic arrangement from various viewpoints and approaches.

♬ Automatic ensemble score generation

This research was mainly carried out by Mr Rio Mizuno, a master's student who graduated in 2009. Given a piano score and the desired composition (instrumentation), MusicPipe generates an accompaniment and sub-melody that fits the melody and can be played by each instrument, and automatically generates an ensemble score in which all instruments can be played by switching between instruments in the middle of the melody. MusicPipe" has been developed as a demonstration system that allows users to input a MIDI piano score, generate an ensemble score (output as a PDF file) and perform it on the spot, and has been presented at interactions and other events.

♬ Automatic Jazz Arrangement

This research was carried out by Mr. Naoto Sato, who completed his Master's degree in 2015. The aim of this research is to develop an automatic jazz arrangement method that transforms the melody itself into a jazz-like arrangement. As a first step, we proposed a method to transform the rhythm, which is an important element of jazz arrangement. First, we prepared a large amount of example data consisting of pairs of original songs and jazz-arranged songs. We consider the deformation rule of jazz-like rhythm as a change between rhythmic patterns separated by a certain length, and deform an arbitrary melody into a jazz-specific rhythm by using the existing example data.

♬ Automatic music box arrangement

This research was carried out by Mr Matsumoto, who received his master's degree in 2022.The melody is converted from a given melody to one that satisfies the structural constraints of a music box for a cylinder music box that is commonly distributed.Cylinder music boxes produce sound when a certain number of plate (metal plates designed to produce a specific pitch) flip the pins on the rotating cylinder. Because the structure is simple and the number of plate is limited, the range of sound is limited and there are structural constraints such as not being able to sound the same pitch continuously.The conversion of note sequences to satisfy these constraints was realised using neural networks.

♬ Automatic arrangement of NES music

This research was carried out by Mr. Ogiso, who received his master's degree in 2022. Game music at that time, as exemplified by Nintendo's Family Computer, used a combination of distinctive electronic sounds (square waves, triangle waves, etc.) to create background music and sound effects due to the limitations of the hardware (sound source modules).This unique music has established itself as a genre by going beyond the framework of game music and composing music in the style of NES music or arranging existing music for the NES sound source.In this study, we aimed to automatically arrange existing music into music that can be played on the NES sound source, and realised the conversion using a neural network.

Publications

  • 佐藤 直人, 酒向 慎司, 北村 正, "自動ジャズアレンジにおける曲の統一性を考慮したリズム転写", 日本音響学会2014年秋季研究発表会, 2-4-19, pp. 945–946, Sep. 2014.
  • 佐藤 直人, 酒向 慎司 北村 正, "自動ジャズアレンジのための事例に基づくリズム転写", 電子情報通信学会2014年総合大会 学生ポスターセッション, ISS-SP-396, p. 225, Mar. 2014. [IEICE]
  • 佐藤 直人, 酒向 慎司, 北村 正, "自動ジャズアレンジのための事例に基づくリズム転写", 情報処理学会研究報告 音楽情報科学(MUS), Vol. 2015-MUS-107, No. 21, pp. 1–2, May 2015. [CiNii]
  • 佐藤 直人, 酒向 慎司, 北村 正, "自動ジャズアレンジのための事例に基づくメロディ変形", 情報処理学会第78回全国大会, 2Q-06, pp. 457–458, Mar. 2016. 【大会奨励賞受賞】
  • 松本 優太, 酒向 慎司, "シリンダーオルゴールを対象としたFCNによる自動編曲", 情報処理学会第85回全国大会講演論文集, 1T-05, pp.491–492, Mar. 2023. [IPSJ]
  • 小木曽 雄飛, 酒向 慎司, "Transformerを用いたファミコン風自動編曲手法の検討", 情報処理学会第85回全国大会講演論文集, 1T-07, pp.495–496, Mar. 2023. [IPSJ]