Artificial music: Computers that create melodies | Hacker News Reader

Artificial music: Computers that create melodies

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31 pointsshill15 comments

Iamus and Melomics! I worked in that project. The music we generated was, actually, not very original, nor did it have much quality; but it was varied enough. One of my coworkers said that we could have defined ourselves as the greatest elevator music database in the world.

I like the output of melomics quite a bit. I checked out quite a few tunes on youtube. If the music had just a hair more structure, I'd almost pay money to have a continuous stream I could play in the background during the workday.

It's a little markov-chainy right now, which I actually find a hair distracting.

However, I really liked this tune https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIeo1XvrnTo

How come music generating software like this never seems to end up in the public's hands?

They have a website for listening to songs and an API: https://melomics.com/

I went to the page at http://geb.uma.es/melomics but I can't find any academic resources like papers or code. Can you suggest where I should look?

You can check F. Vico's publications here: http://geb.uma.es/fjv/publications. The most related would be [1], [2] and [3], especially [2]. As for the code, I don't think any of it is public, but I'm not 100% sure.

[1]: http://geb.uma.es/images/melomics/pai12263.pdf

[2]: http://www.jair.org/media/3908/live-3908-7454-jair.pdf

[3]: http://geb.uma.es/images/papers/AIMAGAZINE.pdf

Thanks!

I think much of the debate is beside the point. For instance, if I heard a piece of music that I found beautiful, and then discovered it wasn't written by a human, I would then find it less meaningful and interesting than if it were written by a human. I don't find that inconsistent, and it's just because I find some of the meaning of music in the fact that it came from a human. There's a difference between music that comes directly from translating one's personal feelings and emotion, and music (even if it's the same sequence of pitches) that comes from a simulation, even if that simulation technology was written by a bunch of humans that have their own artistic impulses. The computer-generated piece may be interesting and worthwhile, but the source of the music is part of the experience for me.

Still, you agree that the piece of computer music can be "interesting and worthwhile", so you already accepted it.

I don't feel like you, I don't care where the good music comes from. But I agree what we consider of quality depends quite heavily on our subjective experiences.

However, I feel similarly about theater and movies. If you want just to see a piece of storytelling, you will be more satisfied with a movie. But if acting is the part of the experience for you, then you're probably more interested in theater, where people do it live.

Actually, now that I think of it, we could compare it to live performance of musical works. Again, some people enjoy the effort of the musicians, and consider it to be a part of the work, but most don't care too much if the piece is recorded.

So perhaps this is a really old debate of whether the means or the end is more important in art.

Based on this analogy, I would predict that in the future, most people will listen to computer generated music, and music composed by actual humans will become comparatively rare.

If the source of the music is a fundamental part of your experience of music, how can you appreciate a random piece of music for which you have no background information? Is it only because you assume (reasonably, though decreasingly so) that it must have been written by a human? And if so, will the advent of computer-generated compositions ruin your ability to enjoy music until you have convincing evidence of its origin?

>how can you appreciate a random piece of music for which you have no background information?

For one, up to now, it was assumed it was from some human artist. Which is the case with 99.999% of the pieces out there.

Second, it depends on the listening habits. Some people can like a piece of art, but they only get really involved when they delve into the biographical details of the artist. For them, the artist, and the intentions he has, mean more than the individual songs. That's the root cause of fandom of course...

> For one, up to now, it was assumed it was from some human artist. Which is the case with 99.999% of the pieces out there.

Where did you get that number? A computer can generate a trillion pieces in a few hours.

Funny, I was wondering about this the other day actually. I really like this Melomics tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CddmYrLjCI

This one was very good actually. Entertaining and very well arranged. I'm sold with the idea that some of us will prefer computer generated music in few years. There is even more potential for popular music. I'm eager to see how this will affect copyright laws and music industry.

It will probably just end up with Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft owning 90% of the pop music industry.

Machine Musicianship is a neat book on the subject.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/machine-musicianship

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