Seminatural Composition

• Published in: Computational Musicology in Hindustani Music pp. 97 - 101
• Main Authors: Tewari, Swarima, Mazzola, Guerino, Chakraborty, Soubhik, Patra, Moujhuri
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2014; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Computational Music Science
• Subjects: Applied mathematics; Extensive Literature; HUMANITIES; Markov Chain; Mechanical Device; MUSIC; Probability Density Function; Transition Probability Matrix
• ISBN: 9783319114712; 3319114719
• ISSN: 1868-0305; 1868-0313
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-11472-9_9

Music composition can be natural, artificial, or seminatural. The first category refers to a composition where a human being decides both what to play (or sing) as well as how to. The second refers to a composition where a mechanical device such as a computer is trained to accomplish both the what and the how part. The third category is of interest here in which the computer will decide the what part, while a human being will take up the how part. Consider a music composer interested in composing a raga-based song. He is looking for the starting line or a clue for the next line. Can computer help? We answer this question through seminatural composition giving an example in raga Bhimpalashree. Seminatural composition was introduced in Chakraborty et al. (2009) and is discussed more formally in Chakraborty et al. (2011) recently. However, for the sake of completeness, we are providing below the algorithm seminatural composition algorithm (SNCA) after which the illustrative example will follow. For an extensive literature on algorithmic composition, the reader is referred to Nierhaus (2008).