Jazz is a free-flowing musical language that is rooted in swing, and improvised melodies. In this project, I aimed to have an AI generate a comprehensible and melodical piece of music, with contrasting ranges in pitch, jazz articulations, and dynamics.

Samples from the 8 layer transformer model built from the ground up

Primer melody - Autumn Leaves - Chordal Melody

(A sample is provided as context and for autoregressive generation, the generated melody starts at 0:27 - it is noticeable the difference - still working on improvements!)

Blues for Alice 1 - Charlie Parker

• One can notice the attempt to mirror the embelishments that Parker puts in

Sample 2

Sample 3

There will never be another you - Chet Baker

• a more space out melody which the model learns to imitate

Previous experimentation with a pretrained model developed by Google Magenta

Some background:

• An Attention Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) was used to capture longer patterns within the music, allowing for better musical phrases and context.
• The song was based on the Charlie Parker tune, Blues for Alice. Piano was selected to be the lead instrument.
• The model was trained on collected recordings on the web of pianists, as well as snippets which I personally recorded!
• Check out the GitHub for more detailed information: GitHub

Take a listen to some of the generated music below! (Note: it’s no where near that of a human)

Sample 1

Notes & Notable Timestamps:

• Trained on a 2 layer RNN with 64 processing units each
• 0:51 - 1:03 - Repetition of a common starting phase
• 1:15 - 1:16 - Blend nicely with Cm7 - F7 harmonic structure
• Notable dissonance throughout (playing E)

Sample 2

Notes & Notable Timestamps:

• Trained on a 2 layer RNN with 128 processing units each
• Relatively more swing feel than others
• At 1:20, there is instance of overfitting
• 1:32 - interesting swing groove happening! (solid chrous of improv)
• 2:02 - fit the Abm7 -> Db7 harmony nicely
• Occasional jazz articulations/phrases appearing (one at 2:37 - 2:38)

Sample 3

Notes & Notable Timestamps:

• Trained on a 3 layer RNN with 64 processing units each
• 1:20 - Interesting stepping up sequence
• The stepping up sequence transitions from mid to high range at 1:30 - 1:33
• 1:33 - 1:34 - Melodical phrase generated!
• 1:40 - 2:36 - A period of exotic back and forths with the upper and lower ranges of pitch (effects of attention)
• 2:36 - Return to natural phrasing