A Bayesian Network for Real-Time Musical Accompaniment

We describe a computer system that provides a real-time musi(cid:173) cal accompaniment for a live soloist in a piece of non-improvised music for soloist and accompaniment. A Bayesian network is devel(cid:173) oped that represents the joint distribution on the times at which the solo and accompaniment notes are played, relating the two parts through a layer of hidden variables. The network is first con(cid:173) structed using the rhythmic information contained in the musical score. The network is then trained to capture the musical interpre(cid:173) tations of the soloist and accompanist in an off-line rehearsal phase. During live accompaniment the learned distribution of the network is combined with a real-time analysis of the soloist's acoustic sig(cid:173) nal, performed with a hidden Markov model, to generate a musi(cid:173) cally principled accompaniment that respects all available sources of knowledge.