Implementation of a Real-time Musical Decision-maker

In this paper, we present a novel implementation of a real-time musical decision-maker. In our scenario, the behaviour of a musical decision-making agent is specified as a constraint satisfaction problem. Generally, constraint satisfaction problems are solved using methods which are not suitable for real-time musical performance, because the amount of time they will take to arrive at a solution is unpredictable. We have developed a musical decision-making agent which can solve some musical constraint problems (i) in a predictable length of time and (ii) usually much more quickly than alternative methods. It works by using an efficient data structure called a binary decision diagram to represent the constraint satisfaction problem.