Generating Music (with an algorithm)

http://techblog.bozho.net/?p=1021

by bozho • 14 years ago

71 49 14 years ago

techblog.bozho.net

markyc2• 14 years ago

it sounds like i expected it would :)

bozho15• 14 years ago

bad, or artificial? If "artificial" - that's the performance side, and it depends on the soundbank. If a real performer plays the same score, it would sound better. The point is to have nice compositions first :)

markyc2• 14 years ago

sounds are ok (to my untrained ear), and great effort building this!

still, a little too random

since it's algoritmic, maybe you can go for a little "coherence" throughout a piece, if it makes sense?

Strilanc• 14 years ago

I've been wondering how long it would be until web sites like this started showing up, where you can listen to automatically generated music on demand.

Hopefully they keep improving until they make the best human composers look mediocre, despite being millions of times faster. Unbounded amounts of new high quality low cost music? Yes please.

bozho15• 14 years ago

My point is similar, but not exactly the same. The best human composers will still be the best. However, the other 90% may be replaced by computers. Or, computers may generate some "skeletons", which real composers can use and enrich.

tomjen3• 14 years ago

Even better, this could be a very good way to permanently kill RIAA -- and because tech like this can't really be made illegal and requires no special permission, ingrediences or tools, there is nothing at all they can do about it.

DanBC• 14 years ago

Have you seen DarwinTunes?

(http://darwintunes.org/)

bozho15• 14 years ago

Nope. Pretty interesting, though. Will read about it more.

b1daly2• 14 years ago

Just checked it out, very interesting concept. But from what I heard the music doesn't seem to be evolving much!

cdcarter2• 14 years ago

We still haven't really solved the problem of getting a digital piano to sound anything like a Steinway Concert Grand. Even if we could replace artistic expression with algorithm in this instance, the instrument sound itself has miles to go as well, and may well never be replicated with the precision that a true piano has.

buymorechuck• 14 years ago

Have you heard of Pianoteq? http://www.pianoteq.com/

songgao2• 14 years ago

Have you ever thought of using some more complicated algorithm for randomness, e.g., genetic algorithm?

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=genetic+algorithm+music+...

bozho15• 14 years ago

I have indeed looked at some genetic algorithms and a lot of papers on the topic (in fact, my former university has a course about that, so I read the coursebook). Most of what I have read is either included, attempted, or in TODO. And obviously, I need to read some more.

songgao2• 14 years ago

That interactive thing looks useful. It might be possible to build a music composer (website) using collective intelligence, i.e., producing music by taking people's response into consideration?

mixedbit• 14 years ago

In 1995 Douglas Hofstadter wrote a short essay that describes his amazement with a piece of music composed by a program. Interesting reading: http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse403/03su/m...

bozho15• 14 years ago

Great. The composer doesn't need to have gone through emotional breakdown, drugs, or whatever, to create beautiful music. He just needs talant. And I think talant may be at some point expressed in zeroes and ones.

gtani• 14 years ago

Hmm, no mention of Prof. Cope at UCSC

http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/experiments.htm

mhax• 14 years ago

My thoughts exactly. Virtual Music gives a great insight into Cope's ideas: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/virtual-music

Sadly his code (lisp if I remember correctly) isn't on github either...

diminish• 14 years ago

Terrific, I guess the first virtual minds will love these first algorithmic songs; from an historical point of view.

mrcharles• 14 years ago

This is probably one of the best algorithmic music generators I've heard. It has a lot more feel of composition to it than most I've heard.

hayksaakian• 14 years ago

The music at any given point sounds great, like classic video game bgm, but theres one thing that irks me. I don't feel a clear start and end to the music, it just seems abrupt both ways.

bozho15• 14 years ago

true that, I'll try to improve the general structure, so that it sounds complete

gnosis• 14 years ago

Also see:

http://musicalgorithms.ewu.edu/algorithms/import.html

bozho15• 14 years ago

I deliberately made it generate/play tracks with 0 user input. This thing might be good, but I couldn't make it play anything meaningful

jmmcd3• 14 years ago

I have generated quite a bit of music using evolutionary algorithms. My research is mostly about figuring out representations that are not at too low a level (eg 1 "gene" per note). I like representations that in some way represent the patterns, oscillations, and processes that seem to drive music forward over time.

A paper: http://ncra.ucd.ie/papers/gecco2011_jmcdermott.pdf

Some short mp3s: http://www.skynet.ie/~jmmcd/software/GraphMusicDemoPieces.tg...

Longer, slow-developing stuff on soundcloud (using slightly different software): http://soundcloud.com/jmmcd/tomorrow-is-a-new-day

bozho15• 14 years ago

they sound pretty nice :) will read the paper immediately

jmmcd3• 14 years ago

Thanks -- I think they're kind of nice at a "local" level, but they don't have the more "global" coherent movement that yours have.

rorrr2• 14 years ago

Where did you get the instrument sounds?

jmmcd3• 14 years ago

Garageband! It's a pretty crappy sequencer, but the synth sounds are fine. I imported the midi tracks saved by the algorithm and then mostly just chose from the preset synth sounds.

One problem I noticed sometimes was a limit to Garageband's polyphony in the pianos. I think it only allows 8 or 10 notes at a time in some cases (not sure exactly how it works) and my software has a habit of playing a lot more than that.

MichailP2• 14 years ago

Nice work. Is anybody aware of automatic music performing software? I think that this is similar to automatic generation of music but more structured and therefore easier to implement. I remember reading some studies about software performing classical compositions, but never found working prototype to play with.

bozho15• 14 years ago

I've read some papers about software used to help live performers, some sort of co-performer, or accompanying robot. But I can't find the paper right now..

MichailP2• 14 years ago

Yap, there is a bunch of papers, but no publicly available prototype to try. Imagine having a python module:

from imaginary_music_module import piano_performer as p

p.play("chopin.ly", style="Pogorelich")

That would be nice :)

rorrr2• 14 years ago

You need better instruments sounds, they sound worse than S3M instruments that I messed with in the 90's.

bozho15• 14 years ago

Will look for a better soundbank, indeed

simonbohs• 14 years ago

I took part in a "create a game in a day" event recently. Some of the compositions sounded like they would have been perfect for the game, which leads to the strange question: what is the copyright on music composed by the algorithm?

bozho15• 14 years ago

Creative Commons is the one I picked

b1daly2• 14 years ago

There are at least two major areas of music composition which the algorythmic attempts fall vastly short of humans.

One is that real music composition is never done where the timbres are separated from the composition. Classically notated music looks kind of like this, but it's really just a shorthand. A composer knows intimately the sounds she is working with.

For pop music, the timbre itself is a mode of creative expression. Innovation in musical timbres and sounds is an expected part of pop music. (I'm using "pop" in the most general sense, covering a large amount of contemporary genres). The meaning of the music is not captured by simplistic reference to musical notation concepts.

The other major limitation of generated music, to my ears, is that of overall compositional structure. The units of composition usually are short, and only locally referenced. So the compositions lack interesting shape over the course of time.

If you think of a composition as a story, it's as if a bunch of plausible paragraph that are coherent within them selves are strung together with only loose reference to each other. So a longer "plot" doesn't emerge.

Joeboy• 14 years ago

> One is that real music composition is never done where the timbres are separated from the composition.

It's true that composers almost always have a sound in mind when they write the notes, but it's very common to perform compositions using entirely different instrumentation to that originally envisaged.

stagas• 14 years ago

The best one I've ever heard was AlgoMusic[0] on the Amiga by Thomas Schürger. I used to spend hours listening to it. And it was a pleasant surprise while searching for it now, to find out that the author has a brand new project called SoundHelix[1] that has all the awesomeness of AlgoMusic, and sounds even more incredible. You should listen to the examples[2].

[0] http://aminet.net/package/mus/misc/AlgoMusic2_4

[1] http://www.soundhelix.com/

[2] http://www.soundhelix.com/audio-examples

teeja• 14 years ago

The program might benefit a lot from better timbres. It's hard to appreciate (or not) other features when the tones are so pallid, so impoverished.

hakaaak• 14 years ago

Man, that is some pretty crappy music. Good effort though. Algorithm needs more theory. Good music isn't that random. You are missing phrasing, repetition, rhythm.

bozho15• 14 years ago

I'm not missing it - all three things are encoded there. They might not be that "visible", which is a point of improvement, but the theory is there. As I wrote in the blog "random" generates noise. That's why composition rules are needed.

gordaco• 14 years ago

Another one, with a pretty bizarre UI: http://www.melomics.com.

virtualritz• 14 years ago

Does not work for me in Chrome. Works in Safari. I'm on a Macbook Pro.

bozho15• 14 years ago

strange. It works on chrome on windows.

jasonebaugh• 14 years ago

There is Wolfram Tones: http://tones.wolfram.com/

It makes the mistake of trying to generate in established genres. None of the genres I care for were anywhere near the mark.

Generating Music (with an algorithm)

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