# Will the composer and/or performer be replaced by robots?



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Modern age is the mechanical age in which men sought to replace human labor with machine labor and which revived the ancient interest in robots or automatons. Leonardo da Vinci designed automatons and Descartes philosophized about them. So it is no wonder that already in the 19th century men not only invented the automobile but also the self-playing piano. 

Yet nowadays you hear little talk anymore about automated pianos or organs which seem to be a relic from previous 'mechanical' centuries (although barrel organs can still be seen playing in the inner cities of the Netherlands). There is more talk now about replacing the composer with the computer: artificial intelligence is the new game in town and even creativity doesn't seem to be uniquely human anymore...

There are some interesting philosophical questions or even paradoxes involved. Computers don't have a sense of beauty but simply imitate our creativity so can it be called creativity, which implies some originality, after all? But then again: isn't our creativity or intelligence fundamentally also simply learning by imitation as well (as we are still apes that are simply great in aping?)? If we can uphold the distinction, can we then argue that all computer generated music is kitsch as it merely imitates which has been produced by human creativity without being able to produce anything new or authentic (as likewise the website thispersondoesnotexist.com generates humanlike faces which it compares with a large database of real human faces to decide whether the generated image can represent a real human face)? Resides human creativity in the ability to create something that deviates from anything which is already created (so what artificial intelligence will reject as e.g. being 'music' when it compares to the music in the database) but which we do recognize as being something beautiful or artistically meaningful (of which computers have no sense)?

And back to the self-playing piano: why has the development of automatons stopped in music? Isn't performing something which robots will be able to do very well as performing - executing orders - is the core business of robots? Wouldn't we be able to generate robots who immaculately perform any composition (actually software programs for composing can play your composition so you hear the result of your work)? Or is the situation here the same as with composing: to play a piece of music well you have to 'understand' the music which comprehension or sensitivity computers lack? But the again: will there be a lot of people who can hear the difference between a human or a well-advanced music robot is playing?


----------



## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

I'm not aware of any computer generated music that is recognised as a unique masterpiece - though perhaps it should be said that a lot of classical music sounds very derivative.

_As we are still apes?_ That hasn't been verified.


----------



## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I think there is plenty of evidence that robotics have replaced composition and playing in the past 35 years.

However, I think the chances of people paying robots for making and performing music are about as good as a robot becoming your doctor or auto mechanic.

I know plenty of recordings that are robotic that I have either given away or trashed.


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I wish some examples were posted in this thread as I can't think of any serious robotic contenders (robot composer or performer) that I have heard. I would imagine that robots would have great difficulty playing relatively simple music like Mozart or even Chopin with the "minimum acceptable amount" of "humanity". Robots may be able to play well for other robots, though, and I can picture a concert of robots playing Beethoven and a robotic composition for an audience of robots.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

A robot couldn't do any worse than some of the awful modern music use hear today


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

When robots become the audience as well as the composers and performers, then we'll be getting somewhere. Milton Babbitt might love the prospect, were he still alive.


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I've played for some conductors who were nothing more than biologic robots. We might as well had a metronome on a stand for all the difference they made.


----------



## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

In a church service environment, no, a robot will never replace the live organist/pianist. 

There are many instances when immediate human intervention is required for delays or pauses during the service. Such delays and pauses cannot be anticipated ... stuff happens ... an offering plate gets dropped; the 1 minute interlude suddenly requires 2 minutes due to needing more communion wafers than were put on the alter before the service; someone faints during the service and requires medical aid ... etc etc. 

No robot, no matter how sophisticated it may be, would be able to anticipate the unknown, imho. 



Kh


----------



## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

We already have music devoid of all humanity, therefore robot-composed. It's called Xenakis.


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Unfinished piano piece by Antonín Dvořák completed by AI programme
https://www.radio.cz/en/section/in-...e-by-antonin-dvorak-completed-by-ai-programme


----------



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

There is such a thing as "musicianship," whch I (and many others) lack completely and separates us from (most) professional musicians. I don't know if it's possible to duplicate that quality in AI.


----------



## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

@Agamemnon...This'll answer your question.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Creativity-Code-Marcus-du-Sautoy/dp/0008288151

My guess is that yes, composers will have to compete with (but will also exploit) AI. Ultimately - depending on processing power beyond the silicon barrier, coding of powerful algorithms and the willingness of players - even realistic performance (including performance conducted or tweaked by the end user!) might be possible by an AI. At present, there are still limitations in samples used by composers for film and media work, yet despite this, convincing mock-ups of real orchestral sound are possible and can fool a lot of people into believing the recording to be live. It is certain that the concept of samples (or some newer development) will progress even further as more processing power becomes available. This will in turn blur distinctions between real and artificial and will probably make such distinctions irrelevant in the end.

Most composers (including me) have used computers for at least 20 years now, in production and/or as a compositional aid and despite the fact I am old school (pencil and tons of rubber marks on ms), even I can see the benefits a computer brings to the art.

Digital technology has insinuated itself into our lives once and for all and it'll need a paradigm shift in our (especially the listeners) definitions of and relation to art before any acceptance of AI in music of worth, but it _is_ here already.


----------



## Guest (Jun 9, 2019)

I would say "no" for bother artists and composers.

For artists, take for example a violin player in an orchestra. If he/she was replaced by a robot, or the entire strings section replaced by a bank of robots, then how could they respond to the wishes of the conductor? They couldn't do so because they're too dumb to recognise the subtle nuances of direction from the conductor. For the performance of solo pieces, I suppose a computer could replace an artist, but all one would get is 100% reproduction of what's on the CD. I can't believe that anyone would pay for a concert ticket to listen to a computer/robot play any such piece.

For composers, if it is to be successful, a new composition has to offer something that the relevant audience will value and want to listen to again. This is likely to require novelty of some kind in what the music has to offer, compared with previous music. Robots can't do anything novel as far as I'm aware. If they could, they would be a danger to the world. All they can do is carry out a fixed task, or respond in certain ways to known stimuli. They can only do what they're programmed to do, and that is all based on the implementation of existing knowledge. Robots are fine for welding bits of car chassis together, and cutting out intricate patterns in various materials, and such like. But for more complex tasks requiring imagination, such as classical music, composers are safe and can "Carry on Composing".

.


----------



## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Robots...maybe not yet, but it is early days. However, coders are writing randomness into their algorithms - algorithms that have sampled many times over, paradigm shifts and stylistic trends that have influenced artistic practice. They are capable of producing output in which the coders can't de-code the trail that leads to the outcome. This type of algorithm learns through something called bottom up learning, as opposed to top down, where the output is dictated by the input. In bottom up learning, the algorithm learns through experience, self correcting at each failure or poor result.
AI is filtering it's way into media production at present and MillionRainbows informed me the Fernyhough uses an algorithm to sift through note combinations for him. Jonathon Harvey exploited digital technology at IRCAM as do others. (In a way, atonality is ideally suited to AI, but harder to assess aesthetically).

I've said this elsewhere, but it's worth saying again here - if you believe art to be at base level, sophisticated pattern recognition which triggers an emotional response, then AI will probably satisfy the condition for art of value sometime soon with a work that is the result of complex processing -just like a composer.

(btw, as a human composer, I'm not advocating AI as such, I just condone it.)


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

...............


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Robot composers are definitely the future: you can pay them nothing for their efforts, live off them without having any talent yourself, and they’ll never know the difference unlike live composers who can feel such inconveniences as starvation, deprivation and pain. Or instead, put a robot in every elementary school in the world and have them start teaching classical music again like it used to be taught by real people before.


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Listening to Xenakis or some new music could prove more appealing than reading the same tired derogatory comments here.


----------



## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Well most of us here are neither composers nor performers so it's not really our problem. What is more troubling for the average TC poster that recently artificial intelligence systems have become increasingly better at _listening_ at music, and are suspected to become eventually better at that than any human. Everyone one this forum will become redundant.

It goes without saying that simultaneously these bots would also be better at discussing about classical music at well.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

Robots have become teachers . Practice , practice , practice ... non-perfection shall be punished . Students argue on-line who has the best robot . Someday these students will realize they are One . All together as the machine - in mass recital we play our One etude perfectly !


----------



## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

To observe the musical thought of a student instructed by an I.A. program 
goto the Beginners Forum re: the writings of Jaro .


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

My thinking after reading the OP was similar to what Partita said here: 

“Robots can't do anything novel as far as I'm aware. If they could, they would be a danger to the world.”

Think of movies like Bladerunner, 2001 A Space Odyessy or Terminator. 

Of dystopian visions, perhaps Orwell’s 1984 was the most prescient. A lot of what goes on today was more or less foreseen in it. There is mention of music machines churning out agitprop songs as synthetic as the meat in antihero Winston’s stew. Some (including on TC) have argued that the pop music of today is assembled in a similar artificial and formulaic way. Others might say the same about avant-grade or serial music.

I think that music even at its most synthetic needs to be guided by human hands. Unlike drone technology used by the military or emerging field in medicine of nanotechnology, music is more an art than a science. If a robot understood music like we do, it would need to have its own personality, memories and cultural identity. At this stage, for all their sophistication, computers are at the level of insects. They can’t begin to understand music let alone produce it.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

Sid James said:


> I think that music even at its most synthetic needs to be guided by human hands.


The one musical talent A.I. has is randomness generation . I'd let this be touched by God since I'll believe God is small and has just enough power to play with the sun and wind , like as to make words of clouds . So , what may cue the multiple-randomness of a master A.I. music-maker is a weather station : moment-by-moment variations of temperature , humidity , solar energy , air pressure , volcanic ash , atomic radiation , smog .

Imagine a month long September exhibit at the art museum + ten days .
The bot could just be composing and playing all the while , 40 days and nights 
of Enviro-SFX-Musica .


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

That sounds more or less like some piece of conceptual art on display at international exhibitions like the Venice Biennale. Art as process rather than anything oriented towards a specific goal. Technology aiming to be ephemeral like nature, albeit based upon the idea of a human and realised with the aid of computers.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

It has a specific theatrical goal . I found it described in the writings of Adolph Appia . He suggested this sound-scape be designed as a minimalist environmental composition only to be heard by the actors on-stage . The stage could be an elevator for that matter . No art is displayed , yet is present .

Similarly , one could be present in a conversation only playing spare little 
noodly musical inventions on a ukulele and not speaking or being spoken
to . It may appear the music is self-less .


----------



## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

starthrower said:


> Listening to Xenakis or some new music could prove more appealing than reading the same tired derogatory comments here.


Sorry, old chap, but I have tried quite hard to get something out of Xenakis, all I can hear is empty dehumanised tripe, truly awful awful music.


----------



## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

starthrower said:


> Listening to Xenakis or some new music could prove more appealing than reading the same tired derogatory comments here.


Xenakis is the perfect music for AI...as it takes no soul, Its programtic, mechanical.


----------



## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

CnC Bartok said:


> Sorry, old chap, but I have tried quite hard to get something out of Xenakis, all I can hear is empty dehumanised tripe, truly awful awful music.


ahhh I failed to see your cogent post, just after I posted my 2 cents worth. 
Great post, excellent call.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Although he used formulas to generate musical material, Xenakis was not a soulless robot. Someone who studied his music told me that he was not prescriptive about the formulas, they where only a starting point. He would use intuition and artistic license to compose like anyone else.

I see him more or less taking to an extreme what others where doing before. Take the use of the Fibonacci Sequence (Bartok was one) or that Wabi-sabi detachment of Debussy. His music gives a sense of humanity being insignificant amidst the vastness of nature. Not easy to take, but it elicits a primal response: terror, awe, shock. It’s sublime in that sense. 

I speak as someone who has experienced his music (including Pleiades live). However I no longer listen to this sort of music, my taste has changed. It’s comparatively mainstream.


----------



## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Computers are completely capable of writing traditional classical music


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

A Chopin example that I question whether it would fool anyone who knows his music:






If genius could be reduced to a magic formula, then everyone would be doing it and getting away with fooling others. There is no formula or mathematical equation for human genius. Somethings come to a composer through inspiration and revelation and not by logic, and the day that a computer can have an intuitive revelation is the day that's never going to convincingly come. Computers, at least as of now, can only proceed on the basis of logic and analysis and not everything can be analyzed down to the last detail in order to compose something that sounds truly original as if it came from a living composer. It can only come close without being the real thing. But ehen a computer can come up with a consistently inspired melody, it may have the ability to compose something worth hearing as Art.


----------



## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Of course the computer can’t write as well as Chopin, but can do as well as any human today trying to write like Chopin


----------



## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

DavidA said:


> A robot couldn't do any worse than some of the awful modern music use hear today


You take every chance you get, don't you?


----------



## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

DavidA said:


> A robot couldn't do any worse than some of the awful modern music use hear today


What follows is cynical and rather sad from a composers' (mine) perspective, but the devil in me tells me it's true.

Atonality and its resultant impact on a less than enthusiastic audience is one that AI (the term robot is inappropriate) can exploit imv. Apart from the _apparent_ lack of relationships between notes in atonal work, there is also the disconnect associated with rhythm that seems to lack a regular pulse, leaving the listener to perceive 'events' rather than a stream of logical and regular musical thought. Combined, these factors will bewilder the general listener at times, who perceives nothing musical to latch on to. Even pros have trouble assessing contemporary atonality at times.

AI is perhaps perfectly suited to exploit the alienating gulf in the perception of atonality, nested rhythmic practice and other creative paradigms between the composer and the listener because given the seeming randomness of the syntax in some modernity, one can also call into question its sincerity, at least superficially from a non-musical and suspicious audiences pov. Being freed from the shackles of self-expression in a language that is rarely understood and in fact needs only arithmetical manipulation to generate a 'work', is the perfect ground for a creative algorithm - this is the concept of music as pure science similar in spirit to Babbitt and the Pythagoreans. The algorithm that is additionally free from the restrictions of a human performance will develop new and fertile virtuosic territory even beyond Fernyhough and the exploitation of electronic means as a sound source will deliver unimaginable timbre. (In fact, Fernyhough's music may well find its ultimate performance in a computer rendition). What we make of the output of such a process depends upon our own aesthetics and proclivities.

What got me into this train of thought was the fact that a few evenings ago, after a few glasses, my wife went to the piano and improvised "alla Boulez' as she informed her audience (me- a composer who sometimes uses atonality as a tool). I sat there (also a little under the influence) and found myself actually liking some moments. I should say that I love modernity (including Boulez), but my wife, although musical, is not a pianist and certainly knows nothing about harmony....it was just a drunken hands down in a disjunct manner.

Funny though this all was, it bought into sharp focus the dilemma that modernity faces, its music is opaque to most and its processes, emotion and musicality obscured by the dominant prejudice of ears toward romanticism and earlier styles. The saddest of all in this sorry set of circumstances, is the fact that composers are drawn to the seductive adventure that an open field of sound promises. If obscurity for a lot of great minds of the last 100 years isn't bad enough, there is now an existential threat from AI....jeez, where's the wine darling?


----------



## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

When irughg3p music seems to lack a context give to a puppet show .


----------



## Guest (Jun 18, 2019)

Tikoo Tuba said:


> When irughg3p music seems to lack a context give to a puppet show .


What do you mean by that exactly?


----------

