Orchestra to Piano: Piano arrangement system based on composers’ arrangement processes

Our goal is to construct an automatic musical arrangement system by applying analysis results of composers’ arrangement processes. We arranged an orchestral score for a solo pianist to evaluate our system. Usually, an orchestral score has several instrumental parts, which is difficult for a soloist to play. Therefore, an orchestral score needs to be arranged with several instrumental parts into both hands parts, which enables a solo pianist to play with both hands. However, there is a problem with an arrangement of more than five notes for each hand, since one hand has only five fingers. To solve this problem, we introduce a protocol analysis for analyzing the process of arranging music. We applied this protocol analysis to a musical arrangement, and analyzed the arrangement process. By using the analysis results, we constructed a piano arrangement system for warning the composer of problems in the score that need to be arranged.

We constructed a piano arrangement system by applying protocol analysis of composers’ arrangement process. In the think-aloud protocol analysis, we recorded the composers thinking-aloud and visual points, and we determined nine problems and six operations in the arrangement process. Using the result of the analysis, we constructed a piano arrangement system. There are exactly same points that a musician arranged and system warned, and musical novice enable to choose from several arrangement processes.