The field of Adaptive Music Technology is rapidly expanding and evolving. While there have been a number of theses and dissertations devoted to the study of new computer music instrument design for persons with disabilities, there is, as yet, no comprehensive study of all of the instruments that have been developed, along with recommendations for how to develop future musical instruments given rapid changes in technology. In this thesis, a comprehensive literature review of previous instruments developed is presented, along with personal interviews of developers where literature has not yet been published about a given instrument. Then recommendations for future development of instruments based on this information are presented. Finally, a case study of the development of one such instrument using the Microsoft Kinect is undertaken, and observations and conclusions based on this research are drawn. / Graduate

This paper is concerned with exploring the musical content of the games Banjo-Kazooie and Yooka-Laylee from the perspectives of musical emotiveness, audiovisual feedback in video games, and adaptive music systems. The exploration consists of formal analysis of the two games, as well as a comparison between the two, this is done in order to determine the evolution of the way music and audio is designed and structured within two specific games created by roughly the same group of developers, only with a 20 year difference. It is fairly easily established, as was the hypothesis, that the two games utilise musical content in much the same ways, but that there has been no significant evolution in how the latter game utilises modern audio technology to expand on the adaptivity of the music system.

In order to develop successful collaborative music systems a variety of subtle interactions need to be identified and integrated. Gesture capture, motion tracking, real-time synthesis, environmental parameters and ubiquitous technologies can each be effectively used for developing innovative approaches to instrument design, sound installations, interactive music and generative systems. Current solutions tend to prioritise one or more of these approaches, refining a particular interface technology, software design or compositional approach developed for a specific composition, performer or installation environment. Within this diverse field a group of novel controllers, described as ‘Tangible Interfaces’ have been developed. These are intended for use by novices and in many cases follow a simple model of interaction controlling synthesis parameters through simple user actions. Other approaches offer sophisticated compositional frameworks, but many of these are idiosyncratic and highly personalised. As such they are difficult to engage with and ineffective for groups of novices. The objective of this research is to develop effective design strategies for implementing collaborative sound environments using key terms and vocabulary drawn from the available literature. This is articulated by combining an empathic design process with controlled sound perception and interaction experiments. The identified design strategies have been applied to the development of a new collaborative digital instrument. A range of technical and compositional approaches was considered to define this process, which can be described as Adaptive Social Composition. Dan Livingstone

<p>With the intention of surveying the field of research in adaptive audio systems for interactive media, a suggested audio system design for adaptive music control is described, and a prototype implementation of key parts of the system is presented and evaluated. </p><p>Foregoing midi-triggered sound banks, the proposed design uses layered segmented audio files, defined and controlled by XML-scripts. The results demonstrate an inclination of a flexible system, capable of adequate adaptive behaviour of high quality sound. </p><p>The implemented system will serve as an extensive basis for future work contributing to the research of adaptive behaviour to both music and sound effects for interactive media, and also as a preliminary foray into the more experimental field of stand-alone non-linear music playback.</p>

With the intention of surveying the field of research in adaptive audio systems for interactive media, a suggested audio system design for adaptive music control is described, and a prototype implementation of key parts of the system is presented and evaluated. Foregoing midi-triggered sound banks, the proposed design uses layered segmented audio files, defined and controlled by XML-scripts. The results demonstrate an inclination of a flexible system, capable of adequate adaptive behaviour of high quality sound. The implemented system will serve as an extensive basis for future work contributing to the research of adaptive behaviour to both music and sound effects for interactive media, and also as a preliminary foray into the more experimental field of stand-alone non-linear music playback.

The purpose of this essay has been to research about adaptive music by analyzing and designing a music system which could handle adaptive music for our game A Story About My Uncle. This essay also goes through the thought  process and techniques used when composing adaptive music, for example vertical re-orchestration and horizontal re-sequencing. For designing the system, I used an object oriented analysis and design approach, utilizing two of its models, the use case model and the class model. With the help of these models and a few system requirements based on the music composition, I was able to design a system which handles the composed music as planned. Although the system works in-game, there are still some issues that should be resolved to perfect the adaptive music experience. / Syftet med uppsatsen har varit att forska om adaptiv musik genom att analysera och designa ett system som kan hantera adaptiv musik till vårt spel A Story About My Uncle. Denna uppsats går också igenom tankeprocessen och tekniker som används när man komponerar adaptive music, som t.ex. vertikal re-orkestrering och horisontel re-sekvensering. För att designa systemet använde jag mig av två modeller inom objekt orienterad analys och design, fallmodellen och klassmodellen. Med hjälp av dessa två modeller och ett fåtal systemkrav baserad på den komponerade musiken kunde jag designa ett system som hanterar musiken som det hade varit tänkt. Även om systemet fungerar i spelet, så finns det fortfarande några problem som borde lösas för att fullända det adaptiva musiksystemet

Video game developers attempt to convey moods to emphasize their game's narrative. Events that occur within the game usually convey success or failure in some way meaningful to the story's progress. Ideally, when these events occur, the intended change in mood should be perceivable to the player. One way of doing so is to change the music. This requires musical tracks to represent many possible moods, states and game events. This can be very taxing on composers, and encoding the control flow (when to transition) of the tracks can prove to be tricky as well. This thesis presents AUD.js, a system developed for procedural music generation for JavaScript-based web games. By taking input from game events, the system can create music corresponding to various Western perceptions of music mood. The system was trained with classic video game music. Game development students rated the mood of 80 pieces, after which statistical representations of those pieces were extracted and added into AUD.js. AUD.js can adapt its generated music to new sets of input parameters, thereby updating the perceived mood of the generated music at runtime. We conducted A/B tests comparing static music, both composed and computer-generated, to dynamically adapting music. We find that AUD.js provides reasonably effective music for games, but that adaptiveness of the music does not necessarily improve player experience over composed music. By conducting a user study during Global Game Jam 2014, we also find that since AUD.js provides a software solution to music composition, it can be a useful tool for game music integration under time pressure.

Music is commonly applied in art and entertainment to enhance the emotional experience. In video-games and other non-linear mediums this task must be achieved dynamically at run-time, as the timeline of events is unknown in advance. Different techniques have been developed to solve this issue, but most commercial applications still rely on pre-rendered audio. In this study, I investigate using a Computer System for Expressive Music Performance (CSEMP) to dynamically shape a computer performance of a pre-composed track to a small platforming game. A prototype environment utilising the KTH Rule System was built and evaluated through semistructured interviews and observations with 7 participants. The results suggest that changes in the musical performance can successfully reflect smaller changes in the experience such as character movement, and are less effective for sound effects or more dramatic changes, such as when the player is engaging in combat or when the player loses. All participants preferred the interactive soundtrack over a non-interactive version of the same soundtrack. / Musik används ofta som ett komplement i konst och underhållning för att förstärka den känslomässiga upplevelse. I datorspel och andra icke-linjära medier måste musiken ta på sig denna rollen dynamiskt, eftersom det inte går att veta hur händelserna kommer utfalla sig i förväg. För att lösa detta problem har det utvecklats olika tekniker, men dom flesta är fortfarande baserade på digitala inspelningar. I denna studie utforskar jag användningen av ett "Computer Systen for Expressive Musig Performance" (CSEMP) för att dynamiskt forma datorns framträdande av en lineär komposition till ett enkelt plattformsspel. En prototyp baserat på systemet "KTH Rule System" utvecklades och utvärderades genom semistrukturerade intervjuer och observationer med 7 deltagare. Resultaten visar att förändringar i uppspelningen lyckades spegla mindre förändringar i spelet, såsom hur en spelkaraktär rör sig, och var mindre effekt som ljudeffekter och för större förändringar, såsom när spelaren är i fara eller spelet är över. Alla deltagare föredrog det interaktiva ljudspåret över en icke-interaktiv version i det samma ljudspåret.

Adaptiv musik ändras beroende av parametrar som ändras av händelser i spelet. Den här studien undersöker om ett adaptivt musik system är en förbättring i spelet A Story About My Uncle jämfört med statisk musik, om det är värt tidsinvesteringen som implementationen kräver. Data samlas in genom att ta in testare som spelar en introduktionsnivå i spelet två gånger, en gång med statisk musik och en gång med adaptiv musik. Spelarna svarar på en enkät efter varje genomspelning av nivåerna. Resultaten visar ingen signifikant skillnad mellan den statiska och adaptiva versionen när man undersöker spelarnas generella spelupplevelse, och upplevelse av musiken i nivåerna.

Adaptiv musik gör det möjligt för spelutvecklare att implementera musik som reagerar på andra spel-parametrar. Därmed kan musiken följa spelets narrativ i realtid och på så vis bidra till en uppslukande upplevelse. I ett spel med adaptiv musik innehar spelaren agens och inverkan på musiken, samtidigt som musiken också innehar agens och inverkan på spelaren. Vi har i detta kandidatarbete undersökt hur den adaptiva musiken skulle kunna påverka spelarens prestationsförmåga genom att titta på element som kan ha inflytande i den här frågan, till exempel musikens funktioner och stress. Vi har bedrivit tester samt kombinerat kvantitativa och kvalitativa metoder för att både kunna fördjupa oss i frågan och gå in på detaljerna, men samtidigt erhålla bredare och mer övergripande kunskap om den adaptiva musikens roll i spel. I texten skildrar vi det praktiska arbetet med alla dess tekniska ingredienser som vi utförde för att skapa och implementera adaptiv musik i spel. Vi erbjuder avslutningsvis även en redogörelse av den insamlade datan, en metodiskt utförd analys, samt en djupgående diskussion som reflekterar över arbetet och föreslår hur man skulle kunna fortsätta undersöka detta ämne. / Adaptive music allows game developers to implement music that responds to other game parameters. Thus, the music can follow the game's narrative in real time, thereby contributing to an immersive experience. In a game with adaptive music, the player has agency and influence on the music, while at the same time the music also has agency and influence on the player. In this bachelor thesis, we have investigated how adaptive music could affect player performance by looking at elements that may influence this issue, such as music features and stress. We have conducted tests as well as combined quantitative with qualitative methods which enabled us to dive deeper in this question and get into the details, while at the same time obtaining broader and more comprehensive knowledge about the role of adaptive music in games. In the text, we describe the practical work with all of  it’s technical ingredients that we performed to create and implement adaptive music in a game. Finally, we also provide an account of the collected data, a methodically conducted analysis, and an in-depth discussion that reflects on the work and suggests how to continue researching this subject.