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Computational Invention of Cadences and Chord Progressions by Conceptual Chord-Blending

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Computational Invention of Cadences and Chord Progressions by Conceptual Chord-Blending Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2015) Computational Invention of Cadences and Chord Progressions by Conceptual Chord-Blending Manfred Eppe16, Roberto Confalonieri1, Ewen Maclean2, Maximos Kaliakatsos3, Emilios Cambouropoulos3, Marco Schorlemmer1, Mihai Codescu4, Kai-Uwe Kuhnberger¨ 5 1IIIA-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain 2University of Edinburgh, UK 3University of Thessaloniki, Greece fmeppe,confalonieri,[email protected] [email protected] femilios,[email protected] 4University of Magdeburg, Germany 5 University of Osnabruck,¨ Germany 6 ICSI, Berkeley, USA [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract chord and moves to the tonic, and the seventh resolves down- wards by stepwise motion, whereas the fifth may be omitted. We present a computational framework for chord inven- In the Phrygian cadence, the bass note (third of the chord) is tion based on a cognitive-theoretic perspective on con- ceptual blending. The framework builds on algebraic the most important note as it plays the role of a downward specifications, and solves two musicological problems. leading note, and the second most important note is the root. It automatically finds transitions between chord progres- In such a setup, we propose two applications of chord blend- sions of different keys or idioms, and it substitutes chords ing, to give rise to new cadences and chord progressions. in a chord progression by other chords of a similar func- The first application is to generate a novel cadence as a ‘fu- tion, as a means to create novel variations. The approach sion’ of existing cadences by blending chords with a similar is demonstrated with several examples where jazz ca- function. For example, in case of the perfect and the Phrygian, dences are invented by blending chords in cadences from we blend their prefinal chords. Here, we start with combina- earlier idioms, and where novel chord progressions are tions of at least three notes with the highest priority. Many generated by inventing transition chords. of these combinations are not triadic or very dissonant and may be filtered out using a set of constraints. However, among 1 Introduction those blends that remain, it turns out that the highest rating ac- cepted blend (according to the priorities described above), is Suppose we live in a early diatonic tonal world, where dis- the tritone substitution progression (IIb7-I) of jazz harmony. sonances in chords are mostly forbidden. We assume that, in This simple blending mechanism ‘invents’ a chord progres- this early harmonic space, some basic cadences have been sion that embodies some important characteristics of the established as salient harmonic functions around which the Phrygian cadence (bass downward motion by semitone to harmonic language of the idiom(s) has been developed — the tonic) and the perfect cadence (resolution of tritone); the for instance, the perfect cadence, the half cadence, the plagal blending algorithm creates a new harmonic ‘concept’ that was cadence and, even, older cadences such as the Phrygian ca- actually introduced in jazz centuries later than the original in- dence. The main question to be addressed in this paper is the put cadences. The backdoor progression also appears in the following: Is it possible for a computational system to invent potential blends, but it embodies less characteristics from the novel cadences and chord progressions based on blending be- inputs and is therefore considered a weaker blend (Fig. 1). tween more basic cadences and chord progressions? To answer this question, we describe cadences as simple pitch classes with reference to a tonal centre of C, and combine pitches of the semi-final chords of different cadences, assum- ing that the final chord is a common tonic chord. Additionally, we assign priorities to chord notes that reflect their relative prominence. Similarly, we assign priorities to the relative ex- tensions of a chord, e.g., having a major third or a dominant seventh, which are independent from its root note. Figure 1: Conceptual blending between the perfect and Phry- Let us examine more closely the perfect and Phrygian ca- gian cadence gives rise to the tritone substitution progression dences (see Fig. 1). Certain notes in their prefinal chords are and the backdoor progression more important as they have specific functions: In the perfect The second application of chord blending is to ‘cross-fade’ cadence, the third of the dominant seventh is the leading and chord progressions of different keys or idioms in a smooth most important note in this cadence, the root is the base of the manner by means of a transition chord, which is the result 2445 of blending. Assume that the input sequences are precom- 2 An Algebraic Model of Chords posed by another system, e.g. the constrained HMM (cHMM) by [Kaliakatsos and Cambouropoulos, 2014]. Let us suppose For our blending framework, we follow Goguen’s proposal to that a chord sequence starts in C major, such as C-Dmin-G7- model conceptual spaces as algebraic specifications. Towards C-F, and after its ending an intermediate G]7-C] chord pro- this, we use specifications defined in a variant of Common gression is introduced (having thus a very remote modulation Algebraic Specification Language (CASL) [Mosses, 2004], from C major to C] major). The cHMM system will not find which is extended with priority values associated to axioms. any transition from the available diatonic chords in C major to the G]7 chord, and will terminate or give a random continua- Definition 1 (Prioritised CASL specification). A prioritised tion. However, if we perform blending on F ([5,9,0]) – the last CASL specification S = (hST ; .ST i; O; P; hA; ≤Ai) con- chord from the first progression – with G]7 ([8,0,3,6]) – the sists of a set ST of sorts along with a preorder .ST that first chord from the last progression – then we get [0,3,6,9] defines a sub-sort relationship, a set O of operators that map which contains two notes from the first chord and three from objects of argument sorts to the respective domain sort, a set the second.1 This resultant chord is the diminished seventh P of predicates that map objects to Boolean values, and a set chord that is well-known to be very versatile and useful for of axioms A with a partial priority order ≤A. modulations to various keys. Hence, the blending mechanism We say that two prioritised CASL specifications are equal, if ‘invents’ a new chord that bridges the two key regions. their sorts, operators, predicates, axioms, as well as subsort- In order to implement a computational framework that is ca- relationships are equal. Note that this notion of equality does not involve priority ordering of axioms. As notational con- pable of performing blends like the aforementioned exam- S ples, we build on the cognitive theory of conceptual blend- vention, we use superscript A to denote the set of axioms of ing by [Fauconnier and Turner, 2002]. We also take inspi- a particular specification S. CASL lets us define our musical ration from the category-theoretical formalisation of blend- theory about chords and notes in a modular way that facili- ing by [Goguen, 1999] and use the category theoretical col- tates the definition of specifications with inheritance relations imit operation to compute blends. Hence, we contribute to between them as follows: the ongoing discussion on musical computational creativity Symbols is the most basic specification that contains the [Ramalho and Ganascia, 1994; Pachet, 2012; Wiggins et al., building blocks to describe notes and chord features. The sort 2009], where conceptual blending has been identified to be at Note is constituted by numbers from 0 to 11, describing their the heart of music meaning and appreciation on formal, ges- position in a scale. This can be a relative or an absolute posi- tural, emotional and referential levels [Brandt, 2008]. tion. For example, 7 can refer to a G note in a C major tonality, A number of researchers in the field of computational cre- or to the relative interval of a perfect fifth (7 semitones above ativity have recognised the value of conceptual blending the tonality’s or chord’s root). for building creative systems, and particular implementa- RelChord inherits from Symbols and contains the op- tions of this cognitive theory have been proposed [Veale erators needed to define a chord of the sort RelChord, and O’Donoghue, 2000; Pereira, 2007; Goguen and Har- which has no absolute root. We use the predicate rell, 2010; Guhe et al., 2011]. However, there is surpris- relNote : RelChord × Note to assign a relative note to a chord. ingly little work on formalisations and computational systems For example relNote(c; 7) means that the chord c has a note that employ blending for music generation, and it is unclear which is seven semitones above the root, i.e., a perfect fifth. how existing implementations of blending can deal with mu- sicological concepts. Exceptions are [Pereira and Cardoso, AbsRelChord extends RelChord in that it provides the sort 2007], who provide a systematic approach to create a novel AbsRelChord, a subsort of chord specifications that have chord by blending an existing chord with colour properties, also absolute notes, in addition to the relative notes inherited from RelChord. Absolute notes are defined with the pred- and [Nichols et al., 2009], who propose a weighted-sum com- icate absNote : AbsRelChord × Note. We use the usual abso- bination of chord transition Markovian matrices from differ- lute tonal centre of C, so that e.g., a G7 chord can be specified ent musical styles to produce novel ‘blended’ ones. In both by the absolute notes [7,11,2,5].
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