Real-time drum accompaniment using transformer architecture

Abstract

This paper presents a real-time drum generation system capable of accompanying a human instrumentalist. The drum generation model is a transformer encoder trained to predict a short drum pattern given a reduced rhythmic representation. We demonstrate that with certain design considerations, the short drum pattern generator can be used as a real-time accompaniment in musical sessions lasting much longer than the duration of the training samples. A discussion on the potentials, limitations and possible future continuations of this work is provided.