A principled approach to the development of drum improvisation skills through interaction with a conversational agent

Shedding is a term used to describe a musical conversation between drummers with the aim to improve their drumming vocabulary, gain confidence in real-time trading of musical ideas, develop an understanding for their original voice on the drumkit and enjoy the process of exploring creativity with a fellow drummer. However, in practice drummers have limited opportunities to play in real time with other drummers. ​This research explores shedding activity in the form of mixed-initiative interaction between a human drummer and a conversational agent. This paper focuses on a series of design studies and experiments to explore three novel refinements to the proposed shedding model.