Researchers say that Jazz-playing robots and computers would soon yield clues about how to help people in collaboration with machines.
The project, MUSICAL (short for Musical Improvisation Collaboration Agent), mainly aimed at developing a music device that can be improvised jazz solo in response to human partners, as musicians improvise jazz area next to each other.
MUSICA is part of the program called Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the branch of the US military responsible for developing new technologies. The project is designed to explore new ways in which you can interact with robots and computers.
"There is definitely a desire for more natural kinds of communications with computational systems as they grow in their ability to be intelligent," Ben Grosser, an assistant professor
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"That could make interactions between humans and machines a lot deeper," said Grosser, who is a jazz trumpeter. "When it comes to jazz, you feel the music as much as you hear and think about it — you react instinctively to things that are going on."
To develop a machine capable of playing jazz improvisation, researchers create a jazz solos database from a variety of musicians and computers analyze the recordings to understand the different processes that come into play when a musician improvises. The researchers would then develop a performance system for analyzing the components of human jazz performances, including rhythm, pitch, harmony and beat. The system will also reflect on what he learned about jazz solos to communicate and respond in real time musically.
"Our goal is to by next summer present a 'call and answer' system to DARPA, where I can play a line of music, and the system will analyze that line and give an answer as close to real time as possible," Grosser