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Deep Learning Techniques for Music Generation – A Survey (arxiv.org)
4 points by lainon on Sep 7, 2017 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: A survey sorts deep-learning music generators along five questions: what music to make, how it's represented, which network type, what limits remain, and how generation is steered. Comparing many existing systems this way builds a common map of design choices and their trade-offs.

Abstract · Deep Learning Techniques for Music Generation -- A Survey

This paper is a survey and an analysis of different ways of using deep learning (deep artificial neural networks) to generate musical content. We propose a methodology based on five dimensions for our analysis: Objective - What musical content is to be generated? Examples are: melody, polyphony, accompaniment or counterpoint. - For what destination and for what use? To be performed by a human(s) (in the case of a musical score), or by a machine (in the case of an audio file). Representation - What are the concepts to be manipulated? Examples are: waveform, spectrogram, note, chord, meter and beat. - What format is to be used? Examples are: MIDI, piano roll or text. - How will the representation be encoded? Examples are: scalar, one-hot or many-hot. Architecture - What type(s) of deep neural network is (are) to be used? Examples are: feedforward network, recurrent network, autoencoder or generative adversarial networks. Challenge - What are the limitations and open challenges? Examples are: variability, interactivity and creativity. Strategy - How do we model and control the process of generation? Examples are: single-step feedforward, iterative feedforward, sampling or input manipulation. For each dimension, we conduct a comparative analysis of various models and techniques and we propose some tentative multidimensional typology. This typology is bottom-up, based on the analysis of many existing deep-learning based systems for music generation selected from the relevant literature. These systems are described and are used to exemplify the various choices of objective, representation, architecture, challenge and strategy. The last section includes some discussion and some prospects.

Jean-Pierre Briot, Gaëtan Hadjeres, François-David Pachet
arXiv:1709.01620 · cs.SD, cs.LG · submitted Sep 5, 2017 · updated Aug 7, 2019
abstract · pdf · html · 209 pages. This paper is a simplified version of the book: J.-P. Briot, G. Hadjeres and F.-D. Pachet, Deep Learning Techniques for Music Generation, Computational Synthesis and Creative Systems, Springer, 2019

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Also discussed: Sep 2017 (96 points, 26 comments)