Pelog: a musical constraint solver with a visual programming language
Michael Droettboom <mdboom@peabody.jhu.edu>
York University, Toronto & Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore

This presentation will discuss an undergraduate project involving the creation of a rule-based musical constraint solver. Its chief design goals were ease of use and flexibility of the rule specification. Such a system can be used to specify any rule-based musical form, such as tonal, harmonic or twelve-tone counterpoint. While the initial design involved text-based Prolog-like rules, field research suggested that an interactive visual programming system would be more accessible to non-programming musicians. A rough prototype of this system was created and will be demonstrated at the presentation. Lastly, the inadequacy of the classical logic programming paradigm, centered around backtracking, is discussed along with the possibility of using a constraint solver over finite domains.