Research

This paper has two different aims: presenting the problem of target-based computer-assisted orchestration and introducing a new computational framework to solve it, called Orchidea. After the definition of the static and the dynamic versions of the problem, a historic perspective will be discussed. The cultural context of assisted orchestration will be examined, with particular attention being given to spectral music. In the second half of the paper, the Orchidea framework for dynamic target-based computer-assisted orchestration will be introduced and...

This article introduces the Orchidea Orchestral Qualities framework (OOQ), an extension of the Orchidea environment for computer-aided orchestration. Traditional target-based orchestration generally reconstructs a target sound “as faithfully as possible” with a collection of samples. But more often than not, composers do not have specific targets in mind while performing orchestration tasks. A large class of orchestration practices deal with the transformation of musical material to enhance or reduce certain of its qualities (such as making a score more “brilliant,” “blurry,” “dense...