Music evolved as a participative and interactive social practice. This is why we can observe certain universal properties that are shared between music of different cultures and even between music and spoken language. To
learn more about these fundamental principles that govern communication, we perform simulations of strongly simplified scenarios. For instance, we assume two agents (e.g., humans) living in a world that consists of a single line with locations denoted by a number between zero and one. These two agents can produce tones in a certain range (again denoted by a number between zero and one), which they use to communicate locations in the world to each other. Initially, the agents do not agree concerning which tone should denote which location. However,
after each communicative act they receive feedback about whether or not the communication was successful, and they successively adapt their behaviour based on this feedback. Finally, a shared language is established
between the two agents, one that has evolved through failure and success of communication. This scenario is the basis for more complex simulations, which can give insights into the evolution of music and language.
means that the agents have come to an agreement concerning which tone should denote which location. Most pairs lie on the diagonal, which means that they associate “tone 0.1” to “location 0.1”, “tone 0.67” to “location 0.67” etc.