Towards an automatic music arrangement framework using score reduction

Abstract

Score reduction is a process that arranges music for a target instrument by reducing original music. In this study we present a music arrangement framework that uses score reduction to automatically arrange music for a target instrument. The original music is first analyzed to determine the type of arrangement element of each section, then the phrases are identified and each is assigned a utility according to its type of arrangement element. For a set of utility-assigned phrases, we transform the music arrangement into an optimization problem and propose a phrase selection algorithm. The music is arranged by selecting appropriate phrases satisfying the playability constraints of a target instrument. Using the proposed framework, we implement a music arrangement system for the piano. An approach similar to Turing test is used to evaluate the quality of the music arranged by our system. The experiment results show that our system is able to create viable music for the piano.