Ressources.ircam

How can machine learning help you write a song? In this talk, I will present two projects that grew out of February Album Writing Month (FAWM.ORG), an international online community of musicians that I help organize. Each year, the goal is to compose 14 new pieces of music during the month of February.
First, I will describe a novel machine learning approach to modeling and and predicting how songwriting collaborations form and succeed within the community using random walks on the social network graph. Because collaborations are associated with positive user outcomes (number of songs written, reaching the 14-song goal, etc.), these results give us insight into how we can help members have a better FAWM experience.
Second, I will discuss two generative language models that we used to create a suite of "computational creativity tools" called The Muse. Despite their statistical simplicity, these tools have successfully helped hundreds of songwriters find and develop ideas for new songs.
I will conclude by proposing a few open directions for how machine learning can support individual and group creativity.

[Part of this research is joint work with Steven Dow.]