My understanding of an expert system, stated without knowledge of the technical niceties--I'm a musician and PC tech, not a programmer or scientist--is that it is a multidimensional database. (I once suggested that BIAB was based on a spreadsheet and was told firmly that it is not.) I am not arguing that BIAB qualifies as an expert system, only that from my limited perspective it quacks like one.

My point of comparison--and this was true before Peter presented the example--is that of the medical diagnostician. You present such a system with symptoms, it parses them through Rules and Filters, and it gives you a differential diagnosis (a medical term for a set of possibilities). Not so much rules, either; I am told that medicine is an art, not a science.

In the case of BIAB I am speaking strictly about the MIDI Stylemaker. The "data" is the short sequences that are played/programmed into the Stylemaker. These are modified by Rules based on music theory, user-definable Filters ("play this sequence only during a dominant seventh chord," etc.), and perhaps other criteria. The more sequences that are programmed in, the more subtle the changes possible. The more Filters that are used, the more complex are the possible results.

I swear there's a sense of humor built in, too.

If it's not an expert system, I'm curious to know why not. What I do know is that Band-in-a-Box is the deepest, most complex software that I have knowingly had my hands on. It is a repository of the musical expertise of decades of musical experience, plus whatever meager skills I am able to to bring to it. It rarely fails to surprise me. Plus I think it could pass the Turing test when put up against, say, Barry Manilow.



Richard

Last edited by Ryszard; 05/19/11 10:47 AM.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."