M2: Conformity #16 for autonomous piano and large ensemble

Jason Palamara is a technologist and performer on acoustic and electronic instruments. As an Assistant Professor of Music Technology at IUPUI, he specializes in the development and deployment of machine learning-enabled performance technologies for music. He is the founder/director of IUPUI’s 30+ member DISEnsemble (Destructive/Inventive Systems Ensemble), which builds or hacks musical and non-musical stuff and plays live concerts. He regularly performs and composes music for modern dance as a solo artist and maintains a long-term creative partnership percussionist-composer Scott Deal, with whom he developed AVATAR. AVATAR is an autonomous music system uses machine learning to play along with live improvisation.

Conformity #16 is a piece composed by Jason Palamara in conjunction with various AI and machine learning applications and ML-enabled performance filters. The initial musical material was generated using Magenta and AVATAR (developed by Palamara and percussionist Scott Deal). The resulting materials were filtered by a novel performance filter called mml.contourizer (developed by Jason Palamara as part of a forthcoming mml package of objects and devices for Max and Ableton Live), which constrains MIDI pitch data into a finite number of predetermined melodic contours. The ensemble plays a graphic score also generated via mml.contourizer. IUPUI's DISEnsemble premiered this piece in their first in-person concert after the pandemic (Spring 2021), accompanying the autonomously performed piano part via a Yamaha Disklavier. DISEnsemble performs live music mainly on second-hand electronic devices, hacked instruments, and sustainably sourced electronic materials.