A new journal article was published that I wrote together with Prof. Ching-Hua Chuan and Prof. Elaine Chew. The article is a survey on current music generation systems from a functional point of view, thus creating a nice overview of current challenges and opportunities in the field. The articles covers systems ranging from game music, to real-time improvisation systems and emotional movie music generation systems.

Herremans D., Chuan C.-H., Chew E.. 2017. A Functional Taxonomy of Music Generation Systems. ACM Computing Surveys. 50(5):30.

Download preprint version here.

Abstract: Digital advances have transformed the face of automatic music generation since its beginnings at the dawn of computing. Despite the many breakthroughs, issues such as the musical tasks targeted by different machines and the degree to which they succeed remain open questions. We present a functional taxonomy for music generation systems with reference to existing systems. The taxonomy organizes systems according to the purposes for which they were designed. It also reveals the inter-relatedness amongst the systems. This design-centered approach contrasts with predominant methods-based surveys and facilitates the identification of grand challenges to set the stage for new breakthroughs.