Mission

Building the foundations of interactive music.

Daydream is a music research lab developing models and real-time systems for human musical expression. We research how generative models can follow musical intention, respond to changing direction, and give creators precise control over sound as it unfolds.

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Research

Precise musical control, in real time.

Our research asks how generative audio models can reliably follow chords, melodies, rhythms, and performance cues while the music is playing.

We develop specialized control models and the real-time systems that make this interaction possible. We evaluate how accurately models follow musical direction, how independently different controls operate, and how quickly the sound responds.

Live: Our real-time engine updates output sound within 100ms of a parameter change.
Additive: Each control is a small, modular add-on designed to steer any base model.
Musical: We’ve taught hallucination-prone models the language of music: chords, grooves, melodies, and more.

Fig. 1

SCORE

Sound Control & Orchestration Response Evaluation

SCORE is a standardized evaluation suite for measuring fine-grained parameter controllability, dynamic orchestration adherence, and multi-stem coordination in generative music models.

TaskScoreBaseOurs

Chords
Play the written chart
Root accuracy against the chart, from an independent chord recogniser · A shuffled chart scores 11%.
Base9%
Ours69%
Melody
Play the line it’s given
Pitch-class accuracy, frame by frame, from a pitch tracker · The best published result we tested scores 48%.
Base15%
Ours53%
Groove
Land on the reference hits
Accent F1 against the reference groove · The wrong groove scores 37%.
Base59%
Ours80%
Accompaniment
Play the missing bass part
Onset match to the real part it replaces · Our hardest task. A generic input scores 25%.
Base11%
Ours33%
Mix
Mix toward a human engineer
Share of songs where ours sits closer to the human mix than the rough does
Base—
Ours79%
Busyness
Follow the busyness dial
Share of commands where measured busyness moves the way the dial did
Base—
Ours100%

The engine

DEMON, our real-time audio engine, is open source. It answers a parameter change in under 100ms and takes control at 25 frames a second. Our models load into it as extensions.

DEMON on GitHub

Possibilities

What if making music were as universal as listening to it?

When people can shape music in real time with precise, intuitive control, musical expression becomes part of everyday life. We see this research enabling new digital and physical instruments, new ways to develop and share musical ideas, and new forms of entertainment for music creators and their fans alike.

01
Musical instruments
Direct and perform with generative sound.
02
Creative tools
Develop musical ideas through continuous experimentation.
03
Interactive entertainment
Shape music through play, movement, and exploration.