We propose a novel approach for the generation of polyphonic music based on LSTMs. We generate music in two steps. First, a chord LSTM predicts a chord progression based on a chord embedding. A second LSTM then generates polyphonic music from the predicted chord progression. The generated music sounds pleasing and harmonic, with only few dissonant notes. It has clear long-term structure that is similar to what a musician would play during a jam session. We show that our approach is sensible from a music theory perspective by evaluating the learned chord embeddings. Surprisingly, our simple model managed to extract the circle of fifths, an important tool in music theory, from the dataset.
@cite_15: In this paper, we introduce new methods and discuss results of text-based LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) networks for automatic music composition. The proposed network is designed to learn relationships within text documents that represent chord progressions and drum tracks in two case studies. In the experiments, word-RNNs (Recurrent Neural Networks) show good results for both cases, while character-based RNNs (char-RNNs) only succeed to learn chord progressions. The proposed system can be used for fully automatic composition or as semi-automatic systems that help humans to compose music by controlling a diversity parameter of the model.
@cite_7: We present a novel framework for generating pop music. Our model is a hierarchical Recurrent Neural Network, where the layers and the structure of the hierarchy encode our prior knowledge about how pop music is composed. In particular, the bottom layers generate the melody, while the higher levels produce the drums and chords. We conduct several human studies that show strong preference of our generated music over that produced by the recent method by Google. We additionally show two applications of our framework: neural dancing and karaoke, as well as neural story singing.
Recently there have been some approaches that take chord progressions into account. @cite_15 propose a text based LSTM that learns relationships within text documents that represent chord progressions. @cite_7 present a hierarchical recurrent neural network where at first a monophonic melody is generated, and based on the melody chords and drums are added. It is worth noting that @cite_7 incorporates the circle of fifths as a rule for generating the chord progressions, whereas our model is able to extract the circle of fifths from the data.