Generative Musical Tension Modeling and Its Application to Dynamic Sonification

This article presents a novel implementation of a real-time, generative model of musical tension. We contextualize this design in an application called the Accessible Aquarium Project, which aims to sonify visually dynamic experiences through generative music. As a result, our algorithm utilizes real-time manipulation of musical elements in order to continuously and dynamically represent visual information. To effectively generate music, the model combines low-level elements (such as pitch height, note density, and panning) with high-level features (such as melodic attraction) and aspects of musical tension (such as harmonic expectancy). We begin with the goals and challenges addressed throughout the project, and continue by describing the project’s contribution in, and comparison to, related work. The article then discusses how the project’s generative features direct the manipulation of musical tension. We then describe our technical choices, such as the use of Fred Lerdahl’s formulas for analysis of tension in music (Lerdahl 2001) as a model for generative tension control, and our implementation of these ideas. The article demonstrates the correlation between our generative engine and cognitive theory, and details the incorporation of input variables as facilitators of lowand high-level mappings of visual information. We conclude with a description of a user study, as well as self-evaluation of our work, and discuss prospective future work, including improvements to our current modeling method and developments in additional high-level percepts.