Automatic Composition and Notation in Network Music Environments

Using real-time notation in network music performance environments adds novel dimensions to man-machine interaction. After a 200-year history of algorithmic composition and a 30-year history of network music performance, a number of performance environments have recently been developed which allow performers to read music composed in real-time off a computer monitor. In the pieces written for these environments, the musicians are supposed to either improvise to abstract graphical symbols and/or to sight-read the score in standard music notation. Quintet.net—a network performance environment conceived in 1999 and used for several project involving Internet as well as local network concerts—has built-in notation capabilities, which makes the environment ideal for this type of music. The search for an ideal notation format, for which several known formats were compared, was an important aspect during the development of the Conductor component of Quintet.net—a component that reads and streams parts to the Client and Listener components. In real-time composition, these parts need to be generated automatically. Therefore, different scenarios can be envisaged, which are either automatic or interactive with the players shaping the outcome of a piece by their performance.