Apparatus and method for creating melody and rhythm by extracting characteristic features from given motif

Abstract

From a given melody motif is extracted a rhythm pattern consisting of a series of rhythmic alignment of notes without a pitch representing the time positions of the notes constituting the melody. Also extracted from the given melody motif are the pitches of the skeleton notes which are notes having primary importance in the rhythm pattern in view of rhythm beats such as the strong beat notes. A rhythm pattern which is similar to the motif rhythm pattern is provided, for example, by searching through a data base including various rhythm patterns. The skeleton notes in the searched similar rhythm pattern are given the pitches identified by the extracted pitches, respectively at corresponding time positions. The non-skeleton notes are given pitches using, for example, passing notes, unison, appoggiatura, changing notes and after notes according to the musical rules relative to the pitch given skeleton notes. Thus, a length of melody similar to the melody motif is obtained. In place of the similar rhythm pattern, a rhythm pattern which is contrastive to the motif rhythm pattern may be provided to obtain a length of melody contrastive to the melody motif.