AutoLeadGuitar: Automatic generation of guitar solo phrases in the tablature space

We present AutoLeadGuitar, a system for automatically generating guitar solo tablatures from an input chord and key sequence. Our system generates solos in distinct musical phrases, and is trained using existing digital tablatures sourced from the web. When generating solos AutoLeadGuitar assigns phrase boundaries, rhythms and fretboard positions within a probabilistic framework, guided towards chord tones by two user-specified parameters (chord tone preference during and at the end of phrases). Furthermore, guitar-specific ornaments such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides and string bends are built directly into our model. Listening tests with our model output confirm that the inclusion of chord tone preferences, phrasing, and guitar ornaments corresponds to an increase in user satisfaction.