What the Heck is Adaptive Music?

One music trend I find extremely interesting is that of "Adaptive Music", which is really being driven by game music soundtracks. This term, "Adaptive Music" seems to have been coined by some folks in the game audio realm (sorry, I've never found a single person to credit with coming up with this term) in he last decade, and it is indeed a more descriptive term than "Interactive Music". So what exactly is Adaptive Music? I recently read the excellent article by composer/audio programmer Andrew Clark on the Gamasutra site titled Defining Adaptive Muisc.

In this article, Mr. Clark offers up the following defining points, which I think sum it up nicely:

• Adaptive music incorporates a system for generating significantly different performance versions of the piece

• The generation system is driven by pre-specified input parameters

• The actual performance-specific events are expected to have a significant degree of indeterminacy

• Traditional musical coherency and organization is a priority

Adaptive music incorporates a system for generating significantly different performance versions of the piece.

I think this makes it a bit easier to understand what Adaptive Music is and how it can be very useful, especially in something like games, where the goal is to provide the player a non-static but compeling music soundtrack that adds to the experience. It is great to see that game audio engines are evolving to allow music to be even more "adaptive".

But the uses for Adaptive Music are not limited to games. Indeed you can start thinking of some cool "futurustic" uses for this - like a dance club where the music evolves from dancer interaction, or maybe even by picking up on subtle emotional cues from attendees. Or how about a subscription radio station that "learns" your tastes and/or responds to the area you are driving through, providing your trip with a tailored "soundtrack"? I hate to think of the consequences of clever marketers getting hold of this idea though - think of the inevitable bombardment of ads tailored to your specific actions or even emotional state!

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