music cartoonWASHINGTON - A group of UGR researchers have come up with a software program that can enable a person who knows nothing about musical compositions to create an original one on his/her own. Project leaders Miguel Delgado, Waldo Fajardo, and Miguel Molina have revealed that their prototype Intelligent Multiagent Music System (Inmamusys) can compose and play music in real time.

Describing the program in the journal Expert Systems with Applications, the researchers have expressed the hope that it will one day bring about great changes in terms of the intrusive and repetitive canned music played in public places.

While the repertoire of such canned music is very limited, lead author Miguel Molina writes that the new invention can be used to create a pleasant, non-repetitive musical environment for anyone who has to be within earshot throughout the day.

Inmamusys is said to have the necessary knowledge to compose emotive music through the use of AI techniques. For developing it, the researchers worked on the abstract representation of the concepts necessary to deal with emotions and feelings.

"(To achieve this) we designed a modular system that includes, among other things, a two-level multiagent architecture," Molina says.

The researchers used a survey to evaluate the system, and found that users were able to identify the type of music composed by the computer.

They say that a person with no musical knowledge can use this artificial musical composer, as he/she need do nothing more than decide on the type of music.

Miguel Molina revealed that the research team's next step would be to enable the computer to imitate a feature as human as creativity. (ANI)