Anton: Answer Set Programming in the Service of Music

Georg Boenn, Martin Brain, Marina De Vos, John ffitch · The University of Bath Online Publications Store (The University of Bath) · 2008

With the increasing efficiency of answer set solvers and a better understanding of program design, answer set programming has reached a stage where it can be more successfully applied in a wider range of applications and where it attracts attention from researchers in other disciplines. One of these domains is music synthesis. In this paper we approach the automation and analysis of composition of music as a knowledge representation and advanced reasoning task. Doing so, it is possible to capture the underlying rules of melody and harmony by a very small, simple and elegant set of logic rules that can be interpreted under the answer set semantics. Our system, Anton, is the first algorithmic composer to combine both harmonic and melodic composition. In addition to describing the composition system thus created we consider the advantages of constructing an algorithmic composer this way, and also the limitations of current solvers.

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