The Challenge of Decentralised Synchronisation in Interactive Music Systems

Synchronisation is an important part of collaborative music systems, and with such systems implemented on mobile devices, the implementation of algorithms for synchronisation without central control becomes increasingly important. Decentralised synchronisation 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 synchronisation of musical agents with fixed and equal tempo, and lay out the road ahead towards synchronisation between agents with large differences in tempo. The effect of introducing human-controlled nodes in the network of otherwise agent-controlled nodes is examined. © 2013 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works