Website: maestrogenesis.org
MaestroGenesis is an interactive evolutionary musical accompaniment generation system. The system allows a user with limited musical expertise to generate pleasing accompaniments. MaestroGenesis generates accompaniments that the user rates, and the evolutionary algorithm evolves new accompaniments based on the user’s feedback.
‘Users begin creating accompaniments by establishing a scaffold, or melody that will provide the initial rhythmic and harmonic seed for the accompaniment. The accompaniment is then represented as a functional transformation of this original scaffold through a method called functional scaffolding for musical composition (FSMC)… These FSMC-accompaniments are then bred like animals might be bred. Once the scaffold is chosen, a population of ten accompaniments is displayed. Each is rated as good or bad by pressing the “thumbs-up” button… By ratings accompaniments with favourable qualities higher than those without, the next generation of accompaniments tends to possess similar qualities to the well-liked parents.’