EMI: Experiments in

Musical Intelligence
One man’s dream to create new
works from the composers who are
decomposing
 What is EMI?
• Written by David Cope
• Originally a fix for “composer’s block”
• Became a tool for composing entire works
• Writes works that emulate styles of various
composers
 Central Challenges
• Creating a grammar that holds all of the
basic rules for coherent music
• Using previous works to bring life into the
music
• Passing off new works as written by the
“original” composer
Music as seen by EMI
 Implementation of EMI
• Parses existing musical examples into a
complex catalog of lexicons

• Augmented Transition Networks provide a

way of linking lexicons of words into
meaningful musical sentences
 SPEAC Identifiers
• Statement - declaration of material
• Preparation - introductory gesture
• Extension - continuance of material or ideas
• Antecedent - active function
• Consequent – conclusive, paired with
antecedent
SPEAC Analysis of Bach Chorale
 Nested Musical Phrases

• Musical phrase analysis on multiple levels

 Extracting the Essence
• Finding a composer’s signature and using it
in the new works

• Two Mozart piano sonata excerpts:

 Success of EMI
• Styles are always recognizable
• “EMI’s Mozart is better than 99 percent of
non-Mozart classical music.” - Cope
• Performers can often feel the depth,
richness, and emotion in EMI’s works
• Tested before experts at Eastman
• Live performance of Mozart’s 42nd
The End – Any Questions?