MUME 2016 - The Popular Critic: Evolving Melodies with Popularity Driven Fitness

Abstract:

A serious issue in applying evolutionary computational methods to creative applications such as music composition lies in the design of the fitness function. This paper proposes a new method of examining fitness, not from an inherent musical aspect of the individual but from the degree to which a given individual conforms to the popular opinion of its peers. A cyclical system is presented that uses an initial corpus of melodies to evolve a fitness 'Critic' which in turn is used to create a new melody. This new melody is then input into the original corpus to continue the cycle of Critics creating melodies that in turn are used to create Critics. A diversity measure of the changing corpus over evolutionary cycles shows that the corpus becomes less diverse as more of the melodies are created by the system. The system creates melodies in a method that is not random but that is unpredictable to the programmer.

Evolved musical compositions