Stamatia Kalaitzidou’s research while affiliated with Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and other places

In this study we look into how repeated listening to a classical music excerpt may affect the perception of its structure and to what extent types of repetition may shape the perception of musical entities. Thirty-eight participants with musical training were asked to indicate in real-time the points where they identified the introduction of 'musical ideas' while listening to the exposition of Sonata No. 18 in E flat major by L.V. Beethoven. The first condition involved listening to an audio recording of the piece (performed by Stephen Kovacevich), while the second condition involved listening to an inexpressive MIDI-generated audio file. Both conditions comprised four successive relistenings of the same excerpt during which participants were asked to repeatedly perform the above task. Our findings suggest that the identification of musical ideas constitutes a viable component for capturing perceived musical structure. In addition, multiple exposures not only resulted in a progressively clearer perception of musical structure but also prompted a perceptual organization dominated by larger structures. Finally, it seems that expressive performance leads to fewer markings of repeated patterns whereas listeners rely more on immediate repetitions in inexpressive mechanical renditions, marking thus more beginnings of repeated patterns as musical ideas.

CHAMELEON is a computational melodic harmonization assistant. It can harmonize a given melody according to a number of independent harmonic idioms or blends between idioms based on principles of conceptual blending theory. Thus, the system is capable of offering a wealth of possible solutions and viewpoints for melodic harmonization. This study investigates how human creativity may be influenced by the use of CHAMELEON in a melodic harmonization task. Professional and novice music composers participated in an experiment where they were asked to harmonize two similar melodies under two different conditions: one with and one without computational support. A control group harmonized both melodies without computational assistance. The influence of the system was examined both behaviorally, by comparing metrics of user-experience, and in terms of the properties of the artifacts (i.e., pitch class distribution and number of chord types characterizing each harmonization) that were created between the two experimental conditions. Results suggest that appreciation of the system was expertise-dependent (i.e., novices appreciated the computational support more than professionals). At the same time, users seemed to adopt more explorative strategies as a result of interaction with CHAMELEON based on the fact that the harmonizations created this way were more complex, diverse, and unexpected in comparison to the ones of the control group.

This paper presents an experiment designed to investigate the influence of a creativity support tool on music creation. Twenty five participants were asked to harmonise two very similar melodies, the first on their own and the second while given the opportunity to interact with the CHAMELEON harmonisation assistant. CHAMELEON can offer a variety of solutions in a melodic harmonisation task by harmonising according to a number of idioms and/or their blends. Comparison between the produced harmonisations by the participants and their selection of favourite CHAMELEON examples indicated that the majority of them were directly influenced by the solutions offered by the system. Three strategies by which participants exploited CHAMELEON were identified: borrowing of full measures or long chord sequences, borrowing of one or more single chords and finally, adoption of general concepts existing in the CHAMELEON examples. We argue that these findings indicate that the system has the potential to stimulate and promote creative thinking.