Virtuosos are human beings who exhibit exceptional performance in their field of activity. In particular, virtuosos are interesting for creativity studies because they are exceptional problem solvers. However, virtuosity is an under-studied field of human behaviour. Little is known about the processes involved to become a virtuoso, and in how they distinguish themselves from normal performers. Virtuosos exist in virtually all domains of human activities, and we focus in this chapter on the specific case of virtuosity in jazz improvisation. We first introduce some facts about virtuosos coming from physiology, and then focus on the case of jazz. Automatic generation of improvisation has long been a subject of study for computer science, and many techniques have been proposed to generate music improvisation in various genres. The jazz style in particular abounds with programs that create improvisations of a reasonable level. However, no approach so far exhibits virtuoso-level performance. We describe an architecture for the generation of virtuoso bebop phrases which integrates novel music generation mechanisms in a principled way. We argue that modelling such outstanding phenomena can contribute substantially to the understanding of creativity in humans and machines.
Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.
CITATION STYLE
Pachet, F. (2012). Musical virtuosity and creativity. In Computers and Creativity (Vol. 9783642317279, pp. 115–146). Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31727-9_5