World Academy of Irish Music and Dance at Limerick & Birmingham Conservatoire

Intelligent Instruments will explore how human musicians can improvise live performances with AI, with a focus on traditional Celtic folk music. The AI will be embedded into augmented musical instruments that embody it in a way that gives musicians a rich somaesthetic experience of playing music.

The project will build on my collaboration with KTH to extend their FolkRNN neural network to improvise ‘folk tunes’ by varying ornamentation, timing and ‘errors’ in real time in response to human playing. It will also build on a collaboration Prof Andrew McPherson at Imperial and KTH to apply soma design to musical instruments to augment traditional folk music instruments with Soma Skins so that musicians can interact with the AI by playing them. We will collaborate with folk musicians at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance an the Birmingham Conservatoire and to create a performance for folk festivals. Conceptually, the project will explore the relationship between error, dependability, improvisation and embodiment for AI.

Bob Sturm’s group at KTH

World Academy of Irish Music and Dance at Limerick

Birmingham Conservatoire

Andrew McPherson’s augmented instruments group at Imperial