Whether you’re a physicist, biologist, economist, data scientist, whatever, the chances are you’ll meet the Markov chains sooner or later. And today we’ll try them on… music!

If you’re not up to the math part, feel free to skip it.

## Math

The system states changes are represented with a help of transition matrix, describing the probabilities of possible transitions. This matrix is a key to determine the state of the model after n steps.

The math behind that is very straightforward - we need just a matrix power. Oh, wait - what if it is fractional, for example, when representing time? There’re many ways to compute it, let’s take a look at some of them.

### 1. Eigen vectors

This method is based on properties of eigen values decomposition:

$$\begin{array}{1} \text{V - eigen vectors}\\ A v_j = \lambda_j v_j\\ A V = V D \text{, where } D = diag(\lambda_1, …, \lambda_n)\\ A^n = V (D ^ n) V^{-1} \end{array}$$

That’s actually how Matlab mpower function looks like:

 1 2  [V,D] = eig(M) An = V * (D .^ n) * inv(V) 

We can take advantage of Math.NET matrix decompositions to implement this method:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15  open MathNet.Numerics.LinearAlgebra.Double open MathNet.Numerics.LinearAlgebra.Generic open Matrix open SparseMatrix let [] MAX_ITER = 10000 let [] PREC = 1e-60 /// Matrix power: eigen values decomposition method /// M^p = V * (D .^ p) / V let mpowEig (m: SparseMatrix) p = let evd = m.Evd() let v, d = evd.EigenVectors(), evd.D() mapInPlace (fun x -> x ** p) d v * d * v.Inverse()

What are the pros/cons?

+ the method is rather efficient
- inverse matrix $V$ might not exist 1

$$A = \begin{bmatrix} 0.78 & 0.2 & 0.12\\ 0 & 0.78 & 0.32\\0 & 0 & 0.78 \end{bmatrix}$$

$$V = \begin{bmatrix} 1.0000 & -1.0000\\ 0.0000 & 0.0000 \end{bmatrix}$$

- some matrices cannot be diagonalised:

$$A = \begin{bmatrix} 3 & 2\\0 & 3 \end{bmatrix}$$

### 2. Generator matrices

If we can find a matrix $G$, such as $A = \exp(G)$, then (remember series?)

$$A^x = \exp(xG) = I + (xG) + (xG)^2 / 2! + (xG)^3 / 3! + …$$

We are interested in finding a generator $G$ with zero row sums and nonnegative off-diagonal entries. So we’ll use Mercator’s series:

$$\log(1 + x) = x - x^2 / 2 + x^3 / 3 - x^4 / 4 + …$$

In matrix case it’s

$$G = \log(I + (A - I)) = (A - I) - (A - I)^2 / 2 + (A - I)^3 / 3 - …$$

The common concern is that the series methods are not very efficient and may be not accurate enough. It’s easy to compare the methods by computing the squared error between the actual and expected values (say, compute $(A^\frac{1}{3})^3$).

Another problem is that a generator matrix (and power too) might have negative elements - not really what you want when dealing with probabilities. We can make them non-negative and keep the rows sums equal to zero… but the power properties won’t be preserved. For example, you can find out that $A^7 <> A^{3.5} * A^{3.5}$.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35  /// Generator matrix let genm (a: SparseMatrix) = let size = a.RowCount let mid = constDiag size 1.0 let a_i = a - mid let rec logm (i, qpow: SparseMatrix) res = if i = MAX_ITER then res else let qdiv = qpow.Divide (float i) if sumSq qdiv < PREC then res + qdiv else logm (i + 1, -qpow * a_i) (res + qdiv) // find log(A - I) // update negative off-diagonal entries, the row-sum = 0 logm (1, a_i) (zeroCreate size size) |> updateneg /// Exp series approximation let expSeries (m: SparseMatrix) = let size = m.RowCount let rec sum (i, k, mpow: SparseMatrix) res = if i = MAX_ITER then res else let mpowi, ki = mpow * m, k * float i let mdiv = mpowi.Divide ki if sumSq mdiv < PREC then res + mdiv else sum (i + 1, ki, mpowi) (res + mdiv) let mid = constDiag size 1.0 sum (1, 1.0, mid) mid /// Matrix power: series method let mpowSeries m (p: float) = SparseMatrix.OfMatrix (genm m * p) |> expSeries

+ Works for non-diagonizable matrices
- Not very efficient
- May be not accurate enough or even fail to converge

These are just the most simple algorithms - would be interesting to check the others, but let’s move on.

## Music

It’s not a secret, that Markov models are often used for generative music, here’s one of the examples: Programming Instrumental Music From Scratch (there’re also some interesting references in the comments). We’ll do a different thing, though: given notes, we can calculate the transition probabilities and… generate new melodies.

But everything in its time.

We need to somehow define the sequences of notes and play them. And thanks to Undertone that’s pretty easy! First of all, let’s download the piano samples - University of Iowa has a collection of recordings here. You can get them manually or using this script. It’s also ok to generate the notes programmatically - but somewhat a bit more realistic is more fun ^_^

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48  // Size: 2/4 /// 1/16 (semiquaver) [] let Sq = 0.0625 /// 1/8 (quaver) [] let Q1 = 0.125 /// 3/8 [] let Q3 = 0.375 ... /// Mapping between note enum and file name convention let noteToPianoName note = match note with | Note.C -> "C" | Note.Csharp -> "Db" | Note.D -> "D" | Note.Dsharp -> "Eb" | Note.E -> "E" | Note.F -> "F" | Note.Fsharp -> "Gb" | Note.G -> "G" | Note.Gsharp -> "Ab" | Note.A -> "A" | Note.Asharp -> "Bb" | Note.B -> "B" | _ -> failwith "invalid note" /// Read piano note from .aiff file let readPianoNote() = let cache = Dictionary<_,_> HashIdentity.Structural let inline path (noteName, octave) = Path.Combine(dir, "Piano.ff." + noteName + string octave + ".aiff") fun (note, octave) -> let noteKey = noteToPianoName note, octave match cache.TryGetValue noteKey with | true, wave -> wave | _ -> let wave = IO.read (path noteKey) |> Seq.toArray cache.Add(noteKey, wave) wave let makeNote = readPianoNote() let getMelody = Seq.collect (fun (noct, time) -> makeNote noct |> Seq.take (noteValue time))

The note is defined with its symbol (C = Do, F# = Fis = Fa-diesis = F sharp), octave and time (♪ - 18, ♬ - 2 notes * 116). The sequence of notes gives a melody, which can be played and even saved later. Can you guess the following one?

Original

Sounds recognizable, but awkwardly stumbling - makes me feel much better about my piano skills. I’d recommend to watch this performace, it’s amazing! (and that pianist-feeling suddenly goes down again)). I believe there’s a way to make the generated sound smoother and so on, but that’s not the goal now.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13  // Define commonly used notes /// Sample melody let ent = [ D3,Sq; Ds3,Sq E3,Sq; C4,Q1; E3,Sq; C4,Q1; E3,Sq; C4,Q3 C4,Sq; D4,Sq; Ds4,Sq E4,Sq; C4,Sq; D4,Sq; E4,Q1; C4,Sq; D4,Q1 C4,Sq; D3,Sq; Ds3,Sq ... C4,Q3 ] Player.Play (getMelody ent)

(Note, the example above has 3 times faster tempo that the one you’ll get with downloaded notes)

The next thing to do is to calculate the transition probabilities. Consider the following sequence: E3 - 116, C4 - 18, E3 - 116, C4 - 38, C4 - 116.

The first option is to simply count transitions between notes and then normalize the rows, so the sum are equal to 1:

$$\begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 0 \\ C4 & 0 & 0 \end{matrix} \rightarrow \begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 1 \\ C4 & 0 & 0 \end{matrix} \rightarrow \begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 1 \\ C4 & 1 & 0 \end{matrix} \rightarrow \begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 2 \\ C4 & 1 & 0 \end{matrix} \rightarrow$$
$$\begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 2 \\ C4 & 1 & 0 \end{matrix} \rightarrow \begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 2 \\ C4 & 1 & 1 \end{matrix} \rightarrow \begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 1 \\ C4 & 0.5 & 0.5 \end{matrix}$$

But wait, what about time? There’re different notes, we can take that into account too: if the ‘smallest’ length is 116, then we can count, how many such intervals each note takes, multiplying by 162:

E3 - 116, C4 - 18, E3 - 116, C4 - 38, C4 - 116

$$\begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 0 \\ C4 & 0 & 0 \end{matrix} \rightarrow \begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 1 \\ C4 & 0 & 0 \end{matrix} \rightarrow \begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 1 \\ C4 & 1 & 1 \end{matrix} \rightarrow \begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 2 \\ C4 & 1 & 1 \end{matrix} \rightarrow$$ $$\begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 2 \\ C4 & 1 & 7 \end{matrix} \rightarrow \begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 1 \\ C4 & 0.125 & 0.875 \end{matrix}$$

So, we know the transitions and times when the next note should be played. A uniform random number generator will choose this next note: e.g. if transitions are 0.4 0.2 0.1 0.3 and generated number is 0.65, that’s the 3rd one (this operation is called choose below).
The note at time t, given transition matrix P is

$$n_t = choose(P^t _{n _{t - 1}})$$

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47  /// Compute the times and probabilities of transitions between notes let transitions xs = let noteToId = Seq.distinctBy fst xs |> Seq.mapi (fun i (note, _) -> note, i) |> dict // # of unique notes and # of notes in melody let n, m = noteToId.Count, List.length xs let matrix = Array.init n (fun _ -> Array.zeroCreate n) let times = Array.zeroCreate m // fill the matrix Seq.pairwise xs |> Seq.iteri (fun i ((note1, time1), (note2, _)) -> let n1, n2 = noteToId.[note1], noteToId.[note2] // option #1 - ignore times // matrix.[n1].[n2] <- matrix.[n1].[n2] + 1. // option #2 - add extra probability for transition to the same note // matrix.[n1].[n1] <- matrix.[n1].[n1] + time1 * 16.0 // matrix.[n1].[n2] <- matrix.[n1].[n2] + 1.0 // option #3 - take time into account (scale by 16) let p = time1 * 16. - 1. in if p > 0. then matrix.[n1].[n1] <- matrix.[n1].[n1] + p matrix.[n1].[n2] <- matrix.[n1].[n2] + 1.0 times.[i + 1] <- times.[i] + time1) normalizeRows matrix, times, Seq.toArray noteToId.Keys let matrix, times, idToNote = transitions ent /// Find index of the next note given probability let transTo (ps: _[]) = ... /// Generate music from transition matrices in a file let genMusic matricesFileName (fstNote, idToNote: _[]) = // transition matrices and times let ps, ts = readMatrices matricesFileName let n = ps.Count let rand = System.Random() let rec gen i prevInd res = if i >= n-1 then List.rev res else let j = transTo ps.[i].[prevInd] (rand.NextDouble()) let next = idToNote.[j], ts.[i] gen (i + 1) j (next :: res) gen 0 0 [fstNote] 

I tried to compute the transition matrix - and both method failed! Turns out this is the real-life ‘unlucky’ matrix. To be sure that doesn’t work, checked R’s expm package:

 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8  logm(x, method = "Eigen") Error in logm(x, method = "Eigen") : non diagonalisable matrix logm(x, method = "Higham08") Error in solve.default(X[ii, ii] + X[ij, ij], S[ii, ij] - sumU) : system is computationally singular: reciprocal condition number = 0 In addition: Warning messages: 1: In sqrt(S[ij, ij]) : NaNs produced 2: In sqrt(S[ij, ij]) : NaNs produced

Fortunately, we don’t need fraction power here: if we count time in 1/16th, it becomes integer! 116 is 1, 38 is 6 and so on. Good old multiplication saves the situation.

Here’s several examples of generated melodies - there’re only 10 notes are in the game, but the results are already pretty different from the original:

What if we add an ‘extra-probability’ for note to stay in the same state?

E3 - 116, C4 - 18, E3 - 116, C4 - 38, C4 - 116

$$\begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0 & 0 \\ C4 & 0 & 0 \end{matrix} \rightarrow \begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 1 & 1 \\ C4 & 0 & 0 \end{matrix} \rightarrow \begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 1 & 1 \\ C4 & 1 & 2 \end{matrix} \rightarrow \begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 2 & 2 \\ C4 & 1 & 2 \end{matrix} \rightarrow$$ $$\begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 2 & 2 \\ C4 & 1 & 9 \end{matrix} \rightarrow \begin{matrix} & E3 & C4 \\ E3 & 0.5 & 0.5 \\ C4 & 0.1 & 0.9 \end{matrix}$$

For this matrix, the generator does exist and we can programmatically compose something like that:

Why stop here? We could define the similar transitions for note length; or add chords - say, generated according to the current tonality; or switch tonalities/modes… Well, there’s a whole ‘musical math’, solfeggio, full of different functions - plenty of space to experiment!

Happy Holidays!

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12  let jingleBells = [ E4,Sq; E4,Sq; E4,Q1 E4,Sq; E4,Sq; E4,Q1 E4,Sq; G4,Sq; C4,Sq; D4,Sq E4,Q1*2.0 F4,Sq; F4,Sq; F4,Sq; F4,Sq F4,Sq; E4,Sq; E4,Sq; E4,Sq E4,Sq; D4,Sq; D4,Sq; E4,Sq D4,Q1; G4,Q1 ] Player.Play (getMelody jingleBells)

1. the example matrix isn’t actually a transition matrix - the row sums should be equal to 1 - it’s here just to demonstrate a possible problem. [return]
2. the sequence C4 - 18, E3 - 116 is almost the same as C4 - 116, C4 - 116, E3 - 116. That gives us 5050 transitions: after each period of time C4 can either stay as C4 or transform to E3. [return]