A software architecture for sound and music processing

This paper introduces a software architecture for the representation and real-time processing of sound and music, based on Artificial Intelligence techniques. In particular, a system able to store and process music and sounds at different levels of abstraction, and to carry out plans for manipulating this material according to the user's goals is described. This system is able to generate new music pieces as well as manipulate existent ones, on the basis of given material: to this end, it provides also formal analysis capabilities on both music and sounds for extracting information useful in subsequent synthesis processes.