A Groovy Virtual Drumming Agent

This paper presents an architecture for an intelligent virtual agent that imitates human drumming behaviour. Through imitation, the agent models the user-specific variations that constitute the “groove” of the drummer. The architecture comprises a motor system that imitates arm movements of a human drummer, and a sound system that produces the sound of the human playing style. The presence of a sound system alleviates the need to use physical models that will create sound when a drum is struck, instead focusing on creating an imitative agent that booth looks and sounds similar to its teacher. Such a virtual agent can be used in a musical setting, where its visualization and sound system would allow it to be regarded as an artificial musician. The architecture is implemented using Echo State Networks, and relies on self-organization and a bottom-up approach when learning human drum patterns.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: IVA
• Authors: Axel Tidemann, Pinar Öztürk, Yiannis Demiris
• Keywords: Human Drumming Behaviour, Intelligent Virtual Agent, IVA 2009, Virtual Agent