There’s an interesting anecdote in Harari’s ‘Homo Deus’ about music professor David Cope. After 7 years of research and development his controversial EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence) programme produced 5,000 Bach-style chorales…in a single day. After being challenged by another music professor, Cope arranged a listening session with EMI’s work going up against Bach and another modern composer (Larson). The final results shocked everyone:
On the appointed date hundreds of lecturers, students and music fans assembled in the University of Oregon’s concert hall. At the end of the performance, a vote was taken. The result? The audience thought that EMI’s piece was genuine Bach, that Bach’s piece was composed by Larson, and that Larson’s piece was produced by a computer.
Harari’s ‘Homo Deus’ P.324
Here’s one of the chorales — truly remarkable:
The track below is from Emily Howell first album, ‘From Darkness, Light’. No surprises that Howell is a newer computer programme designed by David Cope:
….and Sony had a crack at an AI pop tune in the style of the Beatles. I quite like it! Give to a Beatles cover band and you might just have song on your hands:
As a musician this is all a lot to take in.
With super intelligent computers fast approaching, could it be that the greatest musical compositions of all time will eventually be written by computers?
A chilling thought.
David Cope for his part has some interesting thoughts on the topic. Check out this article in the Guardian for more:
“People tell me they don’t hear soul in the music,” he says. “When they do that, I pull out a page of notes and ask them to show me where the soul is. We like to think that what we hear is soul, but I think audience members put themselves down a lot in that respect. The feelings that we get from listening to music are something we produce, it’s not there in the notes. It comes from emotional insight in each of us, the music is just the trigger.”
David Cope in The Guardian, Jun 11 2010
Jeremy James in Hong Kong 
I prefer listening to a human creation as it’s more personal, though I agree the first video is impressive and human-like!
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Oh absolutely, computers are not producing anything all of note yet….it’s those super intelligent algorithms round the corner that will be able to do things we can’t yet imagine
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Listening to this first composition you would swear it was composed by a human, I find it interesting that it was composed by a computer but not too disturbing. When you look at it, the computer is simply binary code and then beyond that electricity, signals. It’s kind of poetic in how something so simple can produce such a complex array of music. Maybe we just need to see the poetic in computers and in code?
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Isn’t this just basically rewriting music though? Take the Beatles one… you go through and take the highlights and make a chord structure based on…I don’t know…say While My Guitar Gently Weeps…just as an example and add “In My Life” or “Drive My Car” for the middle eight?
I guess we all rewrite music in a way anyway so there probably isn’t much difference.
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It’s quite derivative you’re right but what surprised me was the musicality of that pop track. I found it catchy. I’ve been thinking more about this since posting and actually computers are a long way from what we can do at the moment…the thing is though, super intelligent AI may exceed even what we can imagine. Perhaps even simultaneously composing/ performing virtual orchestral pieces on the fly…who knows
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I agree. They have captured the movements and know the changes in each piece…it will be interesting to see what happens.
I can’t help feeling a little sad though.
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Oh absolutely…chilling as well when you consider that before long computers will most probably be doing most things much much better than we can.
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Hmm, well if I hadn’t known they were composed by a computer, I wouldn’t have noticed the music as being special, it was only because I knew they were computer generated that I paid attention. It seems like music is all recycled bits and parts of other songs and much of pop music by humans seems formulaic/robotic anyway. I disagree with the idea that music doesn’t have soul. To me, art whether visual, auditory or dance/performance contains the feelings and intentions of the artist and it does reflect their human soul although it’s open to interpretation. Computers might be able to compose complex pieces but to me they lack emotional depth and human complexity which is random, mysterious and unique.
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It’s fascinating food for thought isn’t it. i think the end of the quote above could be right ie the music triggers emotions in us. This would explain why music affects us all in such different ways. Computers aren’t there yet but I have a feeling it’s only a matter of time
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I think computers will replace humans and that makes me sad.
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This reminds me of when Google Dream came out. The BF, who is an artist, was quite taken back by the computer’s ability to create art. But at the end of the day, HUMANS had to program the computers to do it. Although there is no doubt these kinds of experiments help us to define ‘music’ and ‘art’ and ‘creativity’.- or maybe they just challenge us in new ways.
I didn’t know you are a musician! What do you play?
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That’s right….these computers needed to be programmed…but Machine learning will change all that. I play guitar and piano mostly. Got a little recording set up at home — you could call it a home studio!
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