This article presents JIG, a system for improvisation on jazz ballads. It was described previously in a Master’s Thesis [4]. JIG generates so called ’formulaic’ improvisations. It uses constraints, in combination with probability-driven randomness to generate note-attributes. In this way, numerous different improvisations can be generated on a single song. JIG has been incorporated in SaxEx, a ...

In the last years the physics community has devoted a strong effort to the study of social networks. The availability of large databases containing information on the collaborations between movie actors, scientists, etc. has allowed for many statistical properties of the networks to be characterized. These studies have revealed that some characteristics appear to be general for these kind of ne...

We are interested in educational software tools that can generate novel jazz solos in a style representative of a body of performed work, such as solos by a specific artist. Our approach is to provide automated learning of a grammar from a corpus of performances. Use of a grammar is robust, in that it can provide generation of solos over novel chord changes, as well as ones used in the learning...

Organizational scholars have long been interested in how jazz musicians manage tensions between structure and freedom, plans action, familiarity novelty. Although improvisation has conceptualized as a way of managing such paradoxes, the process itself contains paradoxes. In this essay, we return to identify new paradox interest organizational scholars: intentionality. To improvise creatively, r...

Charlie Haden è stato uno dei più importanti musicisti nella storia del jazz. Sia nel ruolo di contrabbassista che in quello compositore ha saputo innovare il linguaggio musicale della scena jazz e free dagli anni ’60 avanti. Il suo particolare suono la sua originale visione musica gli hanno permesso suonare con i grandi nomi jazz, rendendosi sempre riconoscibile anche contesti musicalmente dif...

Playing with musicians, as if they were there, but without their physical presence, is an old and strong fantasy. Indeed, wouldn’t it be nice if you could play with your favorite – and inaccessible Jazz musician? If you could play with him, or, rather, like him, but still retaining your own musical intentions? Why not then play with a virtual orchestra of musicians? Going further (or closer), w...

Melodies It is reasonable to regard a sequence of terminal symbols in the grammar as being an abstract melody, in the sense that multiple melodies will fit the sequence when the note categories are instantiated to corresponding pitches. Another advantage of such melodic abstractions is that they can be instantiated over any chord progression, even for chords of different quality, such as major,...