Many famous film music pieces are composed from a recognizable theme with different arrangements. However, it is time consuming for composers to fit the mood of the music to the desired mood. In this thesis, we propose a real-time music arrangement system, which allows the user to modulate the mood of the music in real-time while retaining the underlying melody (i.e., theme). In order to know how to achieve the target mood in music arrangement, the mood distribution among the Valence-Arousal model and the relationship between the music parameters and the mood categories are carefully studied by conducting a series of listening tests. In the system, the target mood is used to modulate the music parameters (e.g., tempo, mode), and then the melody is modified while the harmony is automati...[ Read more ]

Many famous film music pieces are composed from a recognizable theme with different arrangements. However, it is time consuming for composers to fit the mood of the music to the desired mood. In this thesis, we propose a real-time music arrangement system, which allows the user to modulate the mood of the music in real-time while retaining the underlying melody (i.e., theme). In order to know how to achieve the target mood in music arrangement, the mood distribution among the Valence-Arousal model and the relationship between the music parameters and the mood categories are carefully studied by conducting a series of listening tests. In the system, the target mood is used to modulate the music parameters (e.g., tempo, mode), and then the melody is modified while the harmony is automatically created. Modulation of the opening joyous music from the opera Carmen with the moods Scary, Sad, and Romantic is demonstrated. Whether the target mood can be expressed by our system and the musical quality of the generated songs are also evaluated in this thesis. The system makes it easy for composers to produce film music from a theme, and it could also be integrated into interactive games to allow the music to follow the action of the game.