Archive
IJMSTA - Vol. 2 - Issue 1 - January 2020
ISSN 2612-2146
Pages: 7
Evaluation of Computational Creativity Support in a Melodic Harmonisation Task
Authors: A. Zacharakis, M. Kaliakatsos-Papakostas, S. Kalaitzidou, E. Cambouropoulos
Categories: Journal
Abstract - CHAMELEON is a computational melodic harmonisation assistant that is capable of harmonising given melodies according to a variety of harmonic idioms and/or their blends. This offers human users a wealth of possible solutions regarding a melodic harmonisation task. This paper presents an experiment designed to evaluate how the harmonic ideas provided by this computational tool may influence music creation. Twentyfive participants were asked to harmonise two very similar melodies, the first on their own and the second while given the opportunity to interact with CHAMELEON. The influence was investigated both through comparison of the produced harmonisation between the two conditions and through behavioural metrics of creativity. The former showed that the harmonisations in the computationally supported condition were overall more complex including more types of chords and roots, while also containing a wider distribution of pitch classes. Comparison between these harmonisations and the selection of favourite CHAMELEON examples for each participant identified traces of direct influence from the latter to the former. Moreover, the user experience evaluation showed an increase in outcome satisfaction for the computationally supported case. Overall, this study has presented evidence that the use of the CHAMELEON harmoniser can act as a creativity support tool in the music domain.
Keywords: Creativity evaluation, Creativity support tools, Musical harmony
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