An Object-Oriented Real-Time Simulation of Music Performance Using Interactive Control

Abstract

This thesis addresses the problem of interactive control of real-time music performance by sound synthesizers. The approach to the problem is based on an analysis of a real world orchestra performance. The problem is decomposed into components that are one-to-one with the real world entities: a conductor, performers, instruments, a score, and parts. A detailed object-oriented design of each of the components is presented and the objects and their real world counterparts are compared. An abstract digital music representation is defined to represent the musical composition that is to be performed by the system. A realtime control mechanism is described that allows a human user to control various aspects of the performance in musically expressive ways. The model is implemented in a system called ZED, which has been shown to simulate some of the dynamic behavior of the live orchestra. Issues concerning the trade-off between runtime efficiency and runtime flexibility are addressed in detail, as well as how these issues affect real-time scheduling, Optimization techniques are presented that help insure timeliness. The object-oriented features of inheritance and encapsulation are shown to provide the system with extensibility and flexibility. Several other approaches to the problem are briefly outlined and ZED is compared with these approaches.