Dissertation Defense - Donya Quick

Dissertation Defense - Donya Quick

Title: "Kulitta: a Framework for Automated Music Composition"

Committee members:
Paul Hudak (Advisor)
Dana Angluin
Zhong Shao
Ian Quinn (Yale University Department of Music)

Abstract:

Kulitta is a Haskell-based, modular framework for automated composition and
machine learning. A central idea to Kulitta's approach is the notion of
abstraction: the idea that something can be described at many different
levels of detail. Music has many levels of abstraction, ranging from the
sound we hear to a paper score and large-scale structural patterns. Music
is also very multidimensional and prone to tractability problems. Kulitta
works at many of levels of abstraction in stages as a way to mitigate these
inherent complexity problems.

Abstract musical structure is generated by using a new category of grammars
called probabilistic temporal graph grammars (PTGGs), which are a type of
parameterized, context-free grammar that includes variable instantiation, a
feature usually only found in grammars for programming languages. This
abstract structure can be turned into full music through the use of
constraint satisfaction algorithms and equivalence relations based on music
theoretic concepts. An extension to an existing algorithm for learning
PCFGs provides a way to learn production probabilities for these grammars
using corpora of existing music. Kulitta's modules for these features are
able to be combined in different ways to support multiple styles of music.

Kulitta's important contributions include (1) algorithms and a generalized
Haskell implementation to support PTGGs, (2) additional formalization of
existing musical equivalence relations along with a new equivalence
relation for modeling jazz harmony, (3) an empirical evaluation strategy
for measuring the performance of automated composition algorithms, and (4)
the extension of a machine-learning algorithm for PCFGs to support a much
broader category of grammars (inclusive of PTGGs) via the use of an oracle.
Kulitta's musical performance is also promising, demonstrating both
stylistic versatility and aesthetically pleasing results.