DailyDirt: Computer Generated Music

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

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.

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