Recurrent Neural Networks and Pitch Representations for Music Tasks

We present results from experiments in using several pitch representations for jazz-oriented musical tasks performed by a recurrent neural network. We have run experiments with several kinds of recurrent networks for this purpose, and have found that Long Short-term Memory networks provide the best results. We show that a new pitch representation called Circles of Thirds works as well as two other published representations for these tasks, yet it is more succinct and enables faster learning.