  We present a model for capturing musical features and creating novel
sequences of music, called the Convolutional Variational Recurrent Neural
Network. To generate sequential data, the model uses an encoder-decoder
architecture with latent probabilistic connections to capture the hidden
structure of music. Using the sequence-to-sequence model, our generative model
can exploit samples from a prior distribution and generate a longer sequence of
music. We compare the performance of our proposed model with other types of
Neural Networks using the criteria of Information Rate that is implemented by
Variable Markov Oracle, a method that allows statistical characterization of
musical information dynamics and detection of motifs in a song. Our results
suggest that the proposed model has a better statistical resemblance to the
musical structure of the training data, which improves the creation of new
sequences of music in the style of the originals.
