I and a friend are developing a computer-based musical composition 
assistant (MCA). So far, we've tried just to envision the interface at 
a fairly high level, without getting into a lot of the details of how it
would work. What we'd like to do is do some preliminary surveying of
fellow musicians to gather ideas and guidelines for a design. Eventually,
we'd like to do some real user-testing and stuff (though i doubt most of
you would be able to participate!). Anyway, if you could take the time to
think about the idea presented below and then answer the questions, i'd 
be very grateful. And you might help guide the development of an
interesting composition tool.

The basic metaphor is a sort of composition assistant who knows about a
fair number of things you can do with a melody or whatever to generate
variations, alter it in certain ways and so on. This assistant presents
you with possible directions to go in, and you pick things you like and 
then the assistant goes off and figures out some more possibilities.

Our intention is not to say much about implementation at this point. There
are many interesting ways to get variations, from genetic algorithms to
musical expert systems, to randomization. The point is that the user
shouldn't have to be aware of what's going on behind the scenes.

The basic interface is as follows:

- a musical theme is used as the starting point
  this might be entered by the user or generated somehow by the MCA

- the process now runs iteratively. At each iteration:
  
  - the MCA presents the user with a number of variations on the
    current theme (or themes)

  - these variations may be generated a number of ways, probably by 
    an extensible toolkit that can do things like transpose, randomize
    notes, rearrange, append themes, change timing, and so on.

  - the user selects a favorite variation, several favorites, or
    rates all the variations after listening to them. the user will have
    as much time as desired and be able to return to different selections
    often

  - (there might be an intermediate stage during which the user can 
     reject particular variations outright and get more before making
     final selections/ratings)

  - the MCA takes the feedback and uses it to generate a new set of
    variations to be evaluated


The MCA will remember the current themes, the candidate variations, and
the selections/ratings made at each iteration, allowing the user to 
recall the selection process, backtrack over decisions, and so on.

The MCA will be able to play over MIDI. 


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We dont have many specific questions on this interface. We'd like to get
your feedback and ideas. Would you find such an interface useful? How
would you like it to work? What should it be able to do? What do you think
would be a good way for you to listen to and select among variations? How
many would you like to see at once? (more variations at once means you
can better explore the space of possibilities, but there's a limit to how
much you can keep in mind at one time.) Again, this is very preliminary,
so all sorts of feedback is welcomed.

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Finally, we have a few questions about your basic composition process.

Do you have a specific process you follow when composing?  If so, what
is it?

What tools do you use during the composition process?  (pencil and
paper, piano, guitar, tape recorder, computer, other people, etc.)

Do you take more of a "top-down" or "bottom-up" approach?  In other
words, do you start with an overall form for a piece and fill in the
details, or instead start with small fragments and build from there?

Do you tend to start compositions by focusing attention on a
particular musical aspect?  (melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, etc.)

Do you primarily write what you hear in your head, or do you noodle
around with an instrument until you find something that sounds right?

Could you walk us through your typical composition session? If possible,
mention what you do, how you do it, what tools you use.



thank you very much,
mike