DailyDirt: Computer Generated Music

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Jul 3rd 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The amount of music in the world is growing every minute -- it's not even possible for a single person to listen to every song within a normal lifespan. Luckily, no one would really want to listen to every song, but technology is accelerating the process of creating music with algorithms that can compose songs faster than any human musician and robots that can play non-stop. If virtual monkeys can re-create Shakespeare (albeit in short snippets), it's only a matter of time before virtual musicians are churning out pop hits. Here are just a few recent accomplishments of our new robot musician overlords.

"Evolution of Music by Public Choice" is the title of a paper that describes how a genetic algorithm -- along with input from volunteers -- made some not-unpleasant-sounding music. Check out Darwin Tunes to participate in the project and become part of the evolutionary record for this. [url]
If you really want to surround yourself with your favorite music, there's some software that'll turn your tunes into a carpet pattern for you. But for some practical reasons (and copyright law?), only 5 carpet patterns from this algorithm have been manufactured: classical, ambient, jazz, electronic and silence. [url]
Sound Machines 2.0 (a robotic string quintet) listens to whatever music you play for it, re-interprets your musical choice, and then plays its own musical composition based on what it heard. However, it might be better to wait for Sound Machines 3.0 for all the bugs to be worked out.... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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Filed Under: ai, algorithm, artificial intelligence, computers, crowdsourcing, darwin tunes, music, robots

11 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2012 @ 5:48pm

wow. computer generated music.
that "evolved" music don't sound all that bad. just needs some vocals now.
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Wally (profile), 3 Jul 2012 @ 5:55pm

:-)
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CEUQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww. youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DyHJOz_y9rZE&ei=IZTzT7vMG6eq0AHy35mMBw&usg=AFQjCNHZwxx35mgRKev_-LIr o6zyC6RmSg

Sorry about the above length, I'm using my iPod to write.
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ken (profile), 3 Jul 2012 @ 6:20pm

Computer Generated Copyrights?
Lets say someone produces an algorithm that produces billions of different tunes? Would all those tunes be under copyright? That person could put any song written after that through a music camparator and if there are any matches could he sue for copyright infringement?

On the flip side could any existing songs that matches any of the tunes make the person liable for copyright infringement?
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Michael Ho (profile), 3 Jul 2012 @ 6:49pm

Re: Computer Generated Copyrights?
It would be an interesting copyright dilemma if a computer algorithm generated some famous melodies without human intervention.

Would a computer (or its programmer) be liable for re-creating Kookaburra?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090609/1159435177.shtml
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Jul 2012 @ 12:56am

Don't need no stinkin' robots!
I was under the impression that pretty much all pop radio content was already being churned out by individuals who can at best claim that they're virtually musicians. And the aforementioned virtual monkeys are already employed in the nation's capital combining, in amusing ways, their infinite short snippets into the laws the govern the nation. It seems somewhat doubtful that these monkeys have any interest in attempting anything as mundane as recreating the works of Shakespeare.

The system we currently have is at least half as good as anything robots could accomplish, and serves fairly adequately to keep those who are of immediate danger to themselves and others off the streets at night. Why consider changing it to employ actual robots?
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Zakida Paul (profile), 4 Jul 2012 @ 1:45am

I'm not a fan of music generated by computers because I'm a bit of a purist. I prefer real music, played by real musicians on real instruments. The day music could be created solely by a computer was a sad day for me.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Jul 2012 @ 10:51am

Re:
Computer generated music is real music, though it would be hard to make a program that captures the soul of what a human would make. Songs about love found/lost, I wuv jesus/relegion is retarded, save the earth from big oil/drill baby drill. That sort of thing.
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drew (profile), 5 Jul 2012 @ 12:23am

Re:
I suspect similar things were said around the popularity of the electric guitar. And the acoustic guitar before that. Some folks probably decried the popularity of the pianoforte when compared to the harpsichord. Which was in itself probably seen as something of an overly complex machine when compared to the purity of a proper lutist...
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Doug D (profile), 5 Jul 2012 @ 10:47am

Synergy / Larry Fast
This reminds me of the oldest album (vinyl LP) I have that includes assembly language source code.

Larry Fast's "Synergy" project is an old (as far back as 1970s era) effort in computer/electronic music. Most of the stuff, he composed the music and programmed old computers (eg. Apple ][ with tons of custom MIDI hardware) to perform it.

But at least once, he instead programmed the computer to compose the music.

http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Experiments-Vol-1-Synergy/dp/B0001KJO7Y

It doesn't exactly sound great. The album is sometimes colloquially referred to as "Pink Noise". But it came with (at least some) source code!

(I never tried to type in enough to get something to work. As I recall, it's all Apple ][ assembly language source code, 6502 or whatever, and back in those days I went from Z80 to 8086 myself.)
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jul 2012 @ 7:36pm

wow Justin Bieber can now create music!
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Tex Arcana (profile), 8 Jul 2012 @ 8:09pm

Dear Darwin Tunes:

You have been found in violation of Genetic Patent #1,475,098,537,956,875,836.b. Please report to the nearest detention center for removal of the offending gene and any growths that emanated as a result of said patented gene and any hybrid or unapproved mutation, as set forth in the Disney Proclamation of 2012.

Thank you for your cooperation!
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