Comments on: Music Created by Learning Computer Getting Better

By: Anonmicron

Anonmicron — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:32:23 +0000

I wonder what would happen if you fed Emmy some Ozzy

By: Composer Uses WiiMotes and AI To Form Robot Band | Singularity Hub

Composer Uses WiiMotes and AI To Form Robot Band | Singularity Hub — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:27:00 +0000

[...] seen some really amazing AI programs that create computer generated music by analyzing the work of famous composers. Jazari is relatively similar. Flanagan created Factor Oracle back in 2008, a program that could [...]

By: ricemine

ricemine — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:11:12 +0000

i’m just a fan of the fact that it responds to criticism…isnt that what pop music is? not necessarily art though.

By: Jax

Jax — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:36:44 +0000

People reject it because they are scared, we are not as special as we think. I find it pretty awesome that we can create a neural network to do this kind of thing. The only thing it can’t do on its own is write a piece of music for a purpose (e.g. for a cause or such like).
Certainly could go a long way in terms of replacing the mainstream though.

By: Geoff W

Geoff W — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:21:22 +0000

I’m really excited for the advances in technology that have progressed us to this point. As a musician that struggles to come up with my own original pieces I can appreciate the difficulty of creating an original work of music that people, in general, would enjoy listening to. Just because a computer can do it better than me doesn’t threaten me at all. There are lots of things that computers do better than me. Recognizing and processing patterns is one of them, and really all that music is when broken down.

No matter the source, it is music. It is art. Different people will analyze art and have different opinions, different implications, and be impressed upon by the art differently. The soul of the music is in the ear of the beholder and how they connect with the stimuli presented. The sound of a brook in a forest can be described as nature’s music. Calming, soothing, and derived from objects with no self awarenes and no person behind them. Emily Howell is not so different except that she/it can improve upon the existing output based on “critisism” instead of a river only able to follow the path of least resistance.

By: Tom C

Tom C — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:32:03 +0000

To gideon: I think you misunderstand how the human mind works. I’m a composer (not very good), and I’ve studied music for many years with composers and musicians who ARE very good. Universally, they have said that their first — and only — goal when writing their music is to make it “good.” Meaning that the idea that a song is driven by, say, the loss of a child, and every note is chosen to express that grief, is rubbish. Music is driven by rules.

Now, true, we humans can map ideas and emotions onto music after the fact. In fact, that’s what movies do — masterfully — by placing a song in a minor key over video footage of something tragic, they “double” the sadness quotient. But that’s not in the music at all, and it’s very, VERY unlikely that ANYTHING like what’s going on in the movie is what was going on in the composer’s mind at the time of composition.

This doesn’t tell us anything about music; rather, it tells us how adaptable the human mind is at assimilating new pieces of information… at finding patterns in the world around us (even when they aren’t there).

I think that this story is amazing, and look forward to future creations.

By: larry

larry — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:32:16 +0000

ok so who owns the copyright

By: gideon

gideon — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:02:14 +0000

When I listen to music I like sharing the experience that the song writer felt when they created the piece, thats what a song writer does, they take some feeling in their gut and in their heart and translate it into sound. Which should be impossible if you think about it but it can be done and because of that the experience is magical. Its almost mystical when done by a master. That is why the concept of machine generated music is so disgusting to performers because by removing a person from the conception of a song it also removes the humanity from it, the shared emotion. When you hear something beautiful you think ‘wow what was going on in the composer/songwriter’s mind while they were creating it?’. Its something that exists for the very reason that we relate to it. A machine generated song doesn’t know how you feel, it doesn’t know your life’s experiences, just how to shift numbers around until it stops receiving negative feedback from its programmer. Imagine if your parents or someone you loved sent all their correspondence (phone calls, email) to you via a computer generated system without any direct input, just a machine generated message. At the end the machine says ‘I love you’. Would you really feel loved? By your loved one for not even speaking to you directly in their own words, who instead relies on a machine to transfer some automated message? I doubt it. How about the machine, would you you feel loved by that? I doubt that too. That is exactly why computer generated songs disgust people who create or perform music. Its not about being replaced (that happens every generation to every musician), its literally about taking the soul out of music, and that soul is the very reason for music’s existence. A song is a conversation from a persons heart, and a machine that generates songs from someone else’s style is like you taking a conversation from someone else, changing some of the details, rewording it, and then pretending you came up with a thought even though you had nothing to say. You could say that people do that too with music themselves, but you’d miss the fact that those people aren’t the ones who are good at songwriting. I’d add that a sentient program that really thinks on the level of a person might be able to move people but it would be because it could reason like us, not because it could imitate us.