Studying music with the “Bach Buddy” Students develop AI-assisted learning companion

How can artificial intelligence support music studies? Wouldn’t a digital learning companion be helpful from time to time? In the “MuKKi” project, short for “Musical Skills Acquisition with the Help of AI”, master’s students from the Institute for Information Systems and the Institute for Music and Music Pedagogy at TU Braunschweig have developed just that: a study buddy based on artificial intelligence that supports the learning of musical skills.

The MuKKi team (from left): Paula Germann, Marie Pickavé, Lena Brandes, Merle Nehrhoff and Tina Omeragic. Michaela Görg is missing from the photo. Photo credit: Benjamin Knorn/TU Braunschweig

The “MuKKi” project, which was launched as part of the TU’s internal call for “Interdisciplinary Collaboration”, is based on the assumption that artificial intelligence can support the learning of musical styles and the recognition of individual composers or interpretations. The aim is to develop an application or software that highlights the characteristics of individual styles, composers or performers. For example, in order to identify an epoch, learners could be presented with pieces of music that contain certain characteristic structures or instrumentation in a clearly recognisable form.

Digital learning companion

Specifically, the aim was to develop a digital learning companion for recognising the music of Johann Sebastian Bach – across all disciplines. Six master’s students took part in the interdisciplinary project: four music teacher training students, one business informatics student and one industrial/civil engineering student.

The project began with extensive research: how and to what extent is AI already being used in the music sector? The music students then collected all the relevant information about Johann Sebastian Bach’s music, while the business informatics students developed the chatbot. The result of this collaboration is “Bach Buddy”, an AI-supported learning companion that helps music students learn the typical characteristics of Bach’s music and correctly categorise audio examples into musical genres.

Not only interesting for music students

“The ‘Bach Buddy’ is not only a valuable learning companion for music students, but also for anyone interested in Bach’s music who wants to categorise it into musical genres and get to know its characteristics,” the MuKKi team agrees. It is still a first prototype that will be expanded, extended and improved over the course of the research project.

In addition to developing the study buddy, the students focused on interdisciplinary collaboration: “The different areas of expertise complemented each other perfectly and we gained insights into each other’s fields of study. Professor Susanne Robra-Bissantz and Professor Bernhard Weber also gave us a lot of freedom to work individually on the research project”.

The presentation of the project will take place on 11 July 2024 at 13:15 in the Great Music Hall of the Institute of Music and its Communication. Anyone interested is warmly invited to come and see for themselves the students’ work and the potential of the “Bach Buddy”.