Evolutionary music is the audio counterpart to Evolutionary art, whereby algorithmic music is created using an evolutionary algorithm. Evolutionary sound synthesis is a related technique for generating sounds or synthesizer instruments. Evolutionary music is typically generated using an interactive evolutionary algorithm where the fitness function is the user or audience, as it is difficult to capture the aesthetic qualities of music computationally. However, research into automated measures of musical quality is also active. Evolutionary techniques have also been applied to harmonization and accompaniment tasks. An image generated using an evolutionary algorithm Evolutionary Art exploits the process of evolution to create an artwork which continually changes according to an evolutionary algorithm. ... Algorithmic composition is the technique of using algorithms to create music. ... In artificial intelligence, an evolutionary algorithm (EA) is a subset of evolutionary computation, a generic population-based metaheuristic optimization algorithm. ... A synthesizer (or synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument designed to produce electronically generated sound, using techniques such as additive, subtractive, FM, physical modelling synthesis, phase distortion, or Scanned synthesis. ... Interactive evolutionary computation (IEC) or Aesthetic Selection is a general term for methods of evolutionary computation that use human evaluation. ... A fitness function is a particular type of objective function that quantifies the optimality of a solution (that is, a chromosome) in a genetic algorithm so that that particular chromosome may be ranked against all the other chromosomes. ... In international law, harmonisation refers to the process by which different states adopt the same laws. ... In music accompaniment is the art of playing along with a soloist or ensemble, often known as the lead, in a supporting manner as well as the music thus played. ...

History

NEUROGEN (Gibson & Byrne, 1991) employed a genetic algorithm to produce and combine musical fragments and a neural network (trained on examples of "real" music) to evaluate their fitness. A genetic algorithm is also a key part of the improvisation and accompaniment system GenJam which has been developed since 1993 by Al Biles. Al and GenJam are together known as the Al Biles Virtual Quintet and have performed many times to human audiences.