The Ghost in the Keys: A Disklavier Demo for Human-AI Musical Co-Creativity

Abstract: While generative models for music composition are increasingly capable, their adoption by musicians is hindered by text-prompting, an asynchronous workflow disconnected from the embodied, responsive nature of instrumental performance. To address this, we introduce Aria-Duet, an interactive system facilitating a real-time musical duet between a human pianist and Aria, a state-of-the-art generative model, using a Yamaha Disklavier as a shared physical interface. The framework enables a turn-taking collaboration: the user performs, signals a handover, and the model generates a coherent continuation performed acoustically on the piano. Beyond describing the technical architecture enabling this low-latency interaction, we analyze the system's output from a musicological perspective, finding the model can maintain stylistic semantics and develop coherent phrasal ideas, demonstrating that such embodied systems can engage in musically sophisticated dialogue and open a promising new path for human-AI co-creation.