The Challenge of Decentralised Synchronisation in Interactive Music Systems

Abstract

Synchronization is an important part of collaborative music systems, and with such systems implemented on mobile devices, the implementation of algorithms for synchronization without central control becomes increasingly important. Decentralised synchronization has been researched in many areas, and some challenges are solved. However, some of the assumptions that are often made in this research are not suitable for mobile musical systems. We present an implementation of a firefly-inspired algorithm for synchronization of musical agents with fixed and equal tempo, and lay out the road ahead towards synchronization between agents with large differences in tempo. The effect of introducing human-controlled nodes in the network of otherwise agent-controlled nodes is examined.