2. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the database is automatically constructed by: aligning a user selected musical score and a corresponding musical performance; segmenting the aligned musical score and the corresponding musical performance into a set of notes being delimited by the aligned notes of the musical score.
1. A computer-readable medium having computer executable instructions for generating a musical output from a musical input, said computer executable instructions comprising steps for: receiving a first musical input comprising a first sequence of notes and a first set of characteristics defining those notes; receiving a database which includes a set of one or more sequences of notes and a second set of characteristics defining those notes, said second set of characteristics including audio samples corresponding to those notes; identifying a set of potential match candidates from the database for each note of the first sequence of notes; computing a cost for each potential match candidate by comparing the characteristics defining each potential match candidate with the corresponding characteristics of the first sequence of notes; computing a transition cost from each match candidate for a given note to each match candidate for the following note; identifying a globally optimal path through the potential match candidates relative to the sequence of the first sequence of notes by finding a path having a best cost path in terms of the costs for each potential match candidate and the cost of the transitions for that path based on a user adjustable musical texture value; constructing a musical output by sequentially concatenating the potential match candidates corresponding to the globally optimal path; wherein the musical texture value enables a user-adjustable balance between per-note accuracy of the musical output relative to the first musical input and stylistic coherence (i.e., correspondence to an artistic style) of the musical output relative to the database by globally weighting the transition cost for each potential match candidate relative to the specified musical texture; wherein lower musical texture values will result in the musical output closely matching the first musical input, with a correspondingly lower stylistic match to the database; and wherein higher musical texture values will result in the musical output having a higher stylistic match to the database with a correspondingly lower accuracy of match to the first musical input.