Title: MIDI-VAE: Modeling Dynamics and Instrumentation of Music with Applications to Style Transfer,
Abstract: We introduce MIDI-VAE, a neural network model based on Variational
Autoencoders that is capable of handling polyphonic music with multiple
instrument tracks, as well as modeling the dynamics of music by incorporating
note durations and velocities. We show that MIDI-VAE can perform style transfer
on symbolic music by automatically changing pitches, dynamics and instruments
of a music piece from, e.g., a Classical to a Jazz style. We evaluate the
efficacy of the style transfer by training separate style validation
classifiers. Our model can also interpolate between short pieces of music,
produce medleys and create mixtures of entire songs. The interpolations
smoothly change pitches, dynamics and instrumentation to create a harmonic
bridge between two music pieces. To the best of our knowledge, this work
represents the first successful attempt at applying neural style transfer to
complete musical compositions.