A Framework for Musical Multiagent Systems

Multiagent system technology is a promising new venue for interactive musical performance. In recent works, this technology has been tailored to solve specific, limited scope musical problems, such as pulse detection, instrument simulation or automatic accompaniment. In this paper, we present a taxonomy of such musical multiagent systems, and an implementation of a computational framework that subsumes previous works and addresses general-interest low-level problems such as real-time synchronization, sound communication and spatial agent mobility. By using it, a user may develop a musical multiagent system focusing primarily in his/her musical needs, while leaving most of the technical problems to the framework. To validate this framework, we implemented and discussed two cases studies that explored several aspects of musical multiagent systems, such as MIDI and audio communication, spatial trajectories and acoustical simulation, and artificial life constructs like genetic codes and reproduction, thus indicating the usefulness of this framework in a variety of musical applications.