Music Created by Learning Computer Is Impressive

http://singularityhub.com/2009/10/09/music-created-by-learning-computer-getting-better/

by kkleiner • 17 years ago

37 16 17 years ago

singularityhub.com

grosales• 17 years ago

The last part of this Radiolab episode features EMI. Overall it's a very interesting talk.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/21

bhousel2• 17 years ago

Sample MP3s are here: http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/mp3page.htm

I think the Chopin one is eerily good.. Perhaps there's an uncanny valley for music too?

jpwagner2• 17 years ago

I studied Cope's book and synthetic music in college.

His Chopin pieces on the surface kind of sound like a Chopin piece, but when you look at the underlying forms the complexity just isn't there. Musicologists can consistently identify the synthetic pieces.

shaunxcode• 17 years ago

I feel that the lack of the underlying complexity is what makes this almost beyond the ability of a human to create in that removing ourselves from patterns/meaning when creating art is incredibly difficult. And to some people the lack of meaning is the beauty. So I am not disagreeing with you - I was just inspired by your comment to think about what I like about music like this.

bhousel2• 17 years ago

Yeah, that's what I found eerie about it! It's close but not quite Chopin.

Maybe the Bach and Joplin pieces didn't bother me so much because baroque counterpoints and piano rags are already kind of formulaic.

I'd love to hear (or maybe be creeped out by) their program trying some jazz greats. That's a style I'm much more familiar with.

CWuestefeld• 17 years ago

I'm a little skeptical about the role of snobbery in this. It's impossible to do a properly blinded experiment, because the folks with the necessary knowledge already are able to identify any Chopin (or Bach or Beethoven) piece, and thus know a priori which is the synthetic piece. This seems rather too similar to the story about winetasters (e.g., here, sorry for the cache link: http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:SB6S068de0gJ:www.latimes... )

mleonhard• 17 years ago

The download links are asking for a password.

nswanberg• 17 years ago

NPR covered David Cope's software, named "Emily Howell", this weekend:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1137194...

It's funny that All Things Considered, not ArsTechnica or singularityhub, included a little detail that will amuse some HN readers:

RAZ: What exactly is Emily Howell, and how does she, it work?

Prof. COPE: Well, that could be a very long answer, but simply put, it's a computer program I've written in the computer programming language LISP.

wallflower• 17 years ago

See also Wolfram Research Lab's Mathematica-driven ring tone generator:

http://tones.wolfram.com/

biohacker42• 17 years ago

Or maybe popular music is simplistic and this is impressive compared to it?

tpyo• 17 years ago

Did anyone find the Beethoven subtly similar to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata?

andreyf• 17 years ago

Having played a lot of Bach when studied piano, I recognized a lot of parts sounding exactly like his pieces.

bkovitz• 17 years ago

More than subtly.

johnfn• 17 years ago

It was kind of clear that these songs were modeled off of specific previously written songs. The Bach sounded a lot like Invention 8, Beethoven's and his Sonata, Joplin and Maple leaf rag.

Music Created by Learning Computer Is Impressive

Related Stories