Music Composition Decision Path

[milfus]

neural networks, agent based design, virtual cellular darwinism, and babelfish, they do all these things, its a matter of what you program, the capabilities are allready there, you would have to have an absolute understanding of music, then it would be pieI am very familiar with artificial intelligence programs, and I am not talking chat bots, my estimation is that its not as far away as I would like. I am gonna have to respectfully disagree.

[ggalen]

milfus,I understand what you are saying.Well, it does seem that it would be much, much easier to build a software program to assemble formulaic songs and melodies, than it would to compose something of a higher order musically.I use Band In A Box extensively, and it does a great job of creating bass/drums/rhythm sections in over 1500 styles.But it doesn't do a very respectable job of creating solos or melody, in my judgment.

[gongchime]

Cool, now I'm really diggin' this thread. The radio station that was playing music based on computers listening to the radio and creating new compositions is now off the air. I never heard it but people said the music it came up with was a bit grungy. It had a hard time distinguishing talk from music when it was supposed to be analyzing the music and everything it could come up with was all midi. It also had a poor ability to choose appropriate samples so thats why it sounded weird much of the time. I just want a program to help me handle the melodies so thats all I was talking about. The programs that try to write counterpoint in the style of Bach or that create chord progressions with appropriate voice leading are of no interest to me. Anyway, classical analysis often says the Beatles had poor voice leading so to me it means that consideration is not as important as classicists make it out to be. In jazz piano such as when using quartal harmony, you often only voice lead the upper voice and let the rest hop around. That's also been the case with guitar voicings. Even the voice leading of the upper voice is completely ignored. So, which expert to listen to? One camp says it's important, another camp says it's mildly important and another says it's completely unimportant. Being able to change the parameters of what the computer will consider acceptable parameters would be a useful feature.If someone is going to put all the composers out of business, it might as well be us right?. You guys are the programmers. Come on! We'll be rich, rich I tell you RICH!!! Buahaha *maniacal laughter ensues*Let me know when you're finished. Haha Completely joking. I know that this would take something like hundreds of thousands of man hours and perhaps millions of dollars.But once it starts selling, I only want 40%.

[milfus]

well we just have to stop anyone from getting an absolute understanding of both music and artificial intelligence, =0) thats the key, labotomies for everyone =0)nah, I wasn't implying it was easy to do or anything, you would have to program it up from its absolute core, the level of honesty and competence required is staggering, you would actually have to be able to create music AND programs at a level that went far far beyond technique and understanding, however, that doesn't make it impossible, and it keeps me up at night sometimes

[squids]

You're both keeping me up. I can almost hear the hounds coming for me as I write this. Creepy future all y'all talkin' about.

[ggalen]

Anything done with computers soon finds programmers building ways that the task can be done by the computer software: this sells software.We are starting to see engineering plug-ins like Ozone-3 that give you a decent mastering with some presets: MUCH better than amateur could do without experience and knowledge; LESS than a professional mastering engineer with "ears".You see Sonar and other DAWS with "preset track configurations" for standard instruments: a bass track with a decent set of tweaked compression, EQ, etc.STANDARD ARGUMENT: "It doesn't equal what a good professional engineer can do." That is correct. But it doesn't have to.So thinking this over, yeah, there will be formulaic songs written by computers. And they will have their audience.But the really good stuff will be written by people, and have a much bigger audience if it is marketed well.

[gongchime]

So, that means you're not going to set your whole life aside to write code for this for the next 6.5 years? Rats. *Kicks dirt*

[milfus]

yeah but, crunk musici think I made my point

[gongchime]

It's my suspicion that a good composer might be able to get somewhere interesting faster than starting from scratch. Heck, even a mediocre composer. Instead of composing a couple of tunes a month or something, a person might start crunking out 1 or 2 a week.

[ggalen]

May 14, 2008, 7:41am, gongchime wrote:It's my suspicion that a good composer might be able to get somewhere interesting faster than starting from scratch. Heck, even a mediocre composer. Instead of composing a couple of tunes a month or something, a person might start crunking out 1 or 2 a week.Well, I do that NOW with Band in a Box: I start with, say, a basic Rock beat modeled on the Rolling Stones. I enter the chords from the keyboard...BIAB recognizes what the chord is. (Oh, that's a G#m13/B? Cool! ).I've played by ear for 30 years and in the Key of C my hands "just do it". But I don't always know exactly what the chord is that I am playing 'cause of inversions, etc.. But BIAB knows.Then, I start applying different styles: "Try this as a Ska, or as a blues shuffle instead. Maybe as a BB King style blues? How about Motown1? Or as that Supremes "slapping snare beat" march-type style..."Baby, Baby, <pop> <pop>, where did our love, go??I'll tweak the tempo, and maybe have a different style for 8 bars only: SKA for the bridge, let's say.Then I write 3 versions to Midi so I can pick and choose the most interesting sections that BIAB comes up with: some are boring, most are fine, but it does have occasional moments of doing something really quite cool. I pop them into Sonar, and set up my virtual instruments: Kontakt for the nice chesty bass I have that I like, modeled on a Fender Precision bass. A Korg M1 for some of it's classic sounds. Atmosphere for a pad, and my standby B4 soft synth for organ.Then I start playing the tracks that I do on Strat..leads, and funky rhythms I like.But as you can see, BIAB is already somewhat "artificially intelligent" doing the backing styles for me.I do have fun with it.