Abbey Road Studios is thrilled to announce that assistive composition platform DAACI, is the 19th start-up to join its music tech incubation programme, Abbey Road Red.

DAACI is a ground-breaking patented ‘meta-composition’ tool. Its founders have created a system based on PhD research with the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Artificial Intelligence and Queen Mary University of London, designed to convincingly pass a Turing Test for music creation.

It takes rules-based composition, and assistive composition in general, to a new level with emotional intelligence and an ability to understand and reflect narrative details and contextual connotations in the music it creates.

Red’s journey through assistive composition Abbey Road Red has explored the potential in different approaches to automated composition using algorithms and machine learning since Red’s launch, beginning with its second cohort in 2017 featuring AImusic, a start-up subsequently acquired by Apple earlier this year.

Red alumnus Scored explored adaptive music for sync in 2016; Humtap generative composition using artificial intelligence in 2018; and most recently LifeScore (2019) created a ground-breaking adaptive music platform using high quality recorded audio, and BrainRap (2021) an assistive lyric platform which uses AI to suggest words to songwriters that suit their narrative and flow in realtime.

Now with DAACI, Red is hoping to help usher in a new universally adopted form of assistive composition technology which takes its expression to the next level, while putting writers and artists first and enhancing human creativity.

Proprietary platform, rules and data
DAACI is inspired by founder Joe Lyske’s 2017 PhD thesis which theorised how to create emotional and contextual intelligence in a rules-based system of composition, while putting a composer using the system in control.

The system operates on the same compositional principles as composers do, abstracting the strategies used to create music and storing them for use in the right contexts, using a proprietary data platform and annotation format programmed by human analysts. Musicologists have created proprietary algorithmic rules for the system which respond to a brief and descriptors from a composer or artist user. Those rules govern the system as it forms musical foundations from within a given dataset. The composer/artist then tells DAACI to compose to their brief creating textures and specific note choices that can be tweaked and revised as desired.

DAACI is designed by composers for composers. It puts composers, artists and songwriters first and in control. Abbey Road Red’s rationale Isabel Garvey, Managing Director, Abbey Road Studios, explains the selection of DAACI: “We’ve been exploring assistive technologies since we launched Abbey Road Red. We believe DAACI represents a step change in music composition assistive technology putting the creator first and truly enhancing a bespoke artist/composer creative experience.”

Karim Fanous, Innovation Manager, Abbey Road Red says: “Writing and creating music is a unique human endeavor informed by our feelings, the stories of our lives, our relationships with others, moods, and so much more which varies wildly from day to day. A generative system can never replace that. But the right assistive system could lift an artist’s creativity and productivity to a new level or take some of the mundane task burdens away. We look forward to exploring this and more with DAACI’s brilliant team of composers, musicians, musicologists and coders.”

Incubation
Abbey Road Studios will be working hand in hand with DAACI throughout its bespoke six-month incubation at Abbey Road Red to define and refine DAACI’s product market fits, put DAACI in front of Red’s extensive mentor and stakeholder networks including parent company Universal Music Group, and work with forward facing artists, composers and music creators to leverage the potential opportunities across the gaming and creator tools space with an artist/composer-first approach.

DAACI’s ambitions
Rachel Lyske, Chief Executive Officer, DAACI, says: “At DAACI we are constantly exploring the most exciting and pioneering advances in music creation. That’s why it’s so thrilling that DAACI and Abbey Road Red are joining forces in our mission to forge the future of music and AI. Abbey Road Red brings a wealth of experience through its rich history as a world-renowned music technology incubator. The future of music is an infinite and universal landscape, and we look forward to navigating it with Abbey Road Red. My heartfelt thanks go to the DAACI business development team and everyone at Abbey Road Red for their fantastic work in bringing us together for this world-changing adventure."