CInBalada Project

Overview

The CInBalada Project is a research project that aims at developing a system for the generation of polyphonic rhythmic compositions, inspired by solely rhythmic music like in some African and African-derived music.

The CInBalada system was developed using the multiagent paradigm. Each agent plays a percussion instrument and knows a certain set (repertoire) of rhythm patterns from the instrument. The goal of each agent is to choose a rhythm pattern that sounds good when played with its peers. So, the rhythmic composition arises from the interaction between the percussionist agents.

To organize such interactions, we have proposed the concept of rhythmic roles, that are defined by a set of individual and contextual criteria for the selection of a rhythm pattern. In the proposed system, each percussion instrument performs one of such rhythmic roles.

The CInBalada system allows users to choose any ensemble of percussion instruments, change the instruments’ repertoires and freely assign rhythmic roles to the selected instruments. Therefore, the system can be a useful tool for experimenting with rhythmic composition.

In the future, we plan to extend the CInBalada system to create a real-time interactive percussionist system to be used either as a learning tool for musicians or as performance tool on stage.

The CInBalada system is the result of Pablo Sampaio's Master’s thesis, developed under the supervision of Patricia Tedesco and Geber Ramalho, in the Center for Informatics (CIn) of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE).

Contact address:  pas { a t } cin . ufpe . br

A Rhythmic Lab