Recent Submissions

  • Teaching rule‐based algorithmic composition: the PWGL library cluster rules

    Anders, Torsten; University of Bedfordshire (University of Bedfordshire, 2016)
    This paper presents software suitable for undergraduate students to implement computer programs that compose music. The software offers a low floor (students easily get started) but also a high ceiling (complex compositional theories can be modelled). Our students are particularly interested in tonal music: such aesthetic preferences are supported, without stylistically restricting users of the software. We use a rule‐based approach (constraint programming) to allow for great flexibility. Our software Cluster Rules implements a collection of compositional rules on rhythm, harmony, melody, and counterpoint for the new music constraint system Cluster Engine by Örjan Sandred. The software offers a low floor by observing several guidelines. The programming environment uses visual programming (Cluster Rules and Cluster Engine extend the algorithmic composition system PWGL). Further, music theory definitions follow a template, so students can learn from examples how to create their own definitions. Finally, students are offered a collection of predefined rules, which they can freely combine in their own definitions. Music Technology students, including students without any prior computer programming experience, have successfully used the software. Students used the musical results of their computer programs to create original compositions. The software is also interesting for postgraduate students, composers and researchers. Complex polyphonic constraint problems are supported (high ceiling). Users can freely define their own rules and combine them with predefined rules. Also, Cluster Engine’s efficient search algorithm makes advanced problems solvable in practice.
  • Researching ethnic minority groups as audiences: implementing culturally appropriate research strategies

    Cola, Marta; Brusa, Manuel Mauri (Taylor & Francis, 2013)
    The transformations of people’s relations to media content, technologies and institutions raise new methodological challenges and opportunities for audience research. This edited volume aims at contributing to the development of the repertoire of methods and methodologies for audience research by reviewing and exemplifying approaches that have been stimulated by the changing conditions and practices of audiences. The contributions address a range of issues and approaches related to the diversification, integration and triangulation of methods for audience research, to the gap between the researched and the researchers, to the study of online social networks, and to the opportunities brought about by Web 2.0 technologies as research tools.
  • Modes of Bible reading in early modern England

    Owens, W.R. (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011)
  • A novel music constraint programming system: the PWGL libraries cluster engine and cluster rules

    Anders, Torsten; Sandred, Örjan (2015-06)
    This workshop demonstrates a music constraint system that offers a user-friendly visual programming interface suitable for rapid development, and at the same time allows for a large range of constraint problems, including complex polyphonic problems. This system consists of the two PWGL libraries Cluster Engine and Cluster Rules.
  • Teaching rule-based algorithmic composition: the PWGL library cluster rules

    Anders, Torsten; University of Bedfordshire (2015-07)
    This session reports on an approach to research - informed learning (research - based learning, according to Jenkins et al. (2007)) in the field of Music Technology. In the unit Algorithmic Composition, students learn how to create computer programs that assist the music composition process (using an easy to learn visual programming system). They then use their programs to compose music with them. Our students typically want to compose in a mainstream musical idiom, e.g., virtually all students aim for tonal music, and most often they want a clear rhythmic structure. Constraint programming is a proven approach to successfully model complex mus ic theories like harmony. I recently developed a software library that greatly simplifies the constraint - based modelling of tonal and metric music. More specifically, this new library (called Cluster Rules) provides a collection of predefined musical rules (constraints) for the new music constraint system Cluster Engine by Örjan Sandred (University of Manitoba, Canada). The collection includes various rules on rhythm, melody, harmony and counterpoint. These predefined rules offer a low floor (students easil y get started), but also allow for a high ceiling (highly complex music theories can be modelled freely, by defining further rules for Cluster Engine from scratch). This session will demonstrate the new software, motivate its design, discuss how students u sed this software to generate musical material for their compositions, and it will report on challenges met in that process.
  • Modelling durational accents for computer-aided composition

    Anders, Torsten; University of Bedfordshire (2014)
  • A model of musical motif

    Anders, Torsten (Springer, 2009)
  • Destabilizing poetries

    Jebb, Keith (Wolfgang Gortschacher, University of Salzburg, 2009)
  • Interfacing manual and machine composition

    Anders, Torsten; Miranda, Eduardo Reck (Routledge, 2009)
    Computer-aided composition (CAC) is situated somewhere in the middle between manual composition and automated composition that is performed autonomously by a computer program. Computers cannot make aesthetic decisions in their own right. They can only follow orders. Aesthetic decisions are made by composers, both via the design of computer programs and by manually controlling these programs. The latter plays an important part in CAC. The composition process typically involves much emending and revising: changing how a computer program is controlled is easier and allows for a more intuitive way of working than changing the program itself. This paper argues that constraint programming is a particularly suitable programming paradigm for flexibly interfacing manual and machine composition.
  • Constraint application with higher-order programming for modeling music theories

    Anders, Torsten; Miranda, Eduardo Reck; University of Plymouth (MIT Press, 2010)
  • A computational model for rule-based microtonal music theories and composition

    Anders, Torsten; Miranda, Eduardo Reck (New Music Inc., 2010)
  • Constraint programming systems for modeling music theories and composition

    Anders, Torsten; Miranda, Eduardo Reck; University of Plymouth (Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2011-10)