ABSTRACT
Rules, tactics and strategies (RTS) represent some of the most important basic processes used by playing games and composers when they compose music. Rules, whether conscious or not, constrain the number and type of choices available. Tactics solve immediate problems created by such rules, and provide successful local control of the compositional environment. Strategies involve more global goals, indicating where, and to some extent how, a game player or a composer can achieve these goals. The chapter presents a computer program showing how RTS can be used to successfully play board games, and follow this by using a strikingly similar program to compose music. The computer program called Tactic-Toe, of which presents an overview, plays tic-tac-toe until it is obvious it has learned the rules properly. The simplicity of tic-tac-toe is ideal for teaching the concepts of combinational game theory and the branch of artificial intelligence that deals with game-tree searches.
