# Music composed with a computer.



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Here's a piece I love composed with a computer - do you know any others?


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

According to Wikipedia, Tenney composed the Spectrum Pieces (2009) - haven't read that a computer was involved.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

janxharris said:


> According to Wikipedia, Tenney composed the Spectrum Pieces (2009) - haven't read that a computer was involved.


He died in 2006, I believe Spectrum 6 was composed in 2001. I can provide you with some references to get the gen about the programme he used to compose it if you want.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

I don't know if I could listen to and enjoy a piece made by a computer. Although I don't know the specifics of this piece, I'm not comfortable with the possibility of computers and AI taking over art in the near future.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

allaroundmusicenthusiast said:


> I don't know if I could listen to and enjoy a piece made by a computer. Although I don't know the specifics of this piece, I'm not comfortable with the possibility of computers and AI taking over art in the near future.


They've been being used for the past 60 years at least, and AI hasn't taken over so far. This computer composed piece by Xenakis is very Ligeti like I think -- immersive and contrapuntal, I don't know if Ligeti made computer generated clouds.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Music composed with a computer.*

What exactly does that mean? Is there a difference between music composed "with a computer" and music composed "by a computer"? Or is music always composed "by a composer" utilizing various tools (pen, score paper, a software program...)? Was a computer (such as a laptop) used with some sort of composition program (such as Finale, or Encore, or Sibelius)? If so, the sense of being composed "with a computer" is as meaningless as the sense that something is composed "with a piano" (used in conjunction with writing a piece, as in punching out notes, listening, then writing them down) or "with a copyist" who can write down the notes dictated by the composer (as Bach apparently did when he went blind). Do we ever say "music composed with a copyist"?

There is apparently such a thing as "computer music" or "electronic music", stuff where the sounds are generated using a machine such as Charles Wuorinen does in his Pulitzer Prize winning composition _Time's Encomium_. Note that included in the title of that work is the parenthetical phrase "(For Synthesized & Processed Synthesized Sound)". Here the sounds were apparently generated from the machine, not from man-played instruments. Nor, in the fashion of MIDI instruments. But a human composer is behind the programming (or the creating).

A lot of what we now call "noise music", the experimental electronic stuff by folks such as Merzbow, is created by generating sounds from machinery, some of which is electronic and may be associated with computers.

I've used software to compose pieces on my computer, but I wouldn't call that "computer music". I've had days when my computer acted up to the point that I wanted to smash it with a hammer. I suspect I could record that action and call the noise created "computer music" or "music created with a computer", but it might be "hammer music" just as accurately. And certainly it will be "music (or noise music) created with a hammer".

So, exactly what is "computer music" or music "composed with a computer"? What definition do we use? And what is the role of the human composer in the process? At what point is music legitimately that "composed with a computer" so as to be some sort of distinct form of art?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SONNET CLV said:


> *Music composed with a computer.*
> 
> What exactly does that mean? Is there a difference between music composed "with a computer" and music composed "by a computer"? Or is music always composed "by a composer" utilizing various tools (pen, score paper, a software program...)? Was a computer (such as a laptop) used with some sort of composition program (such as Finale, or Encore, or Sibelius)? If so, the sense of being composed "with a computer" is as meaningless as the sense that something is composed "with a piano" (used in conjunction with writing a piece, as in punching out notes, listening, then writing them down) or "with a copyist" who can write down the notes dictated by the composer (as Bach apparently did when he went blind). Do we ever say "music composed with a copyist"?
> 
> ...


I didn't mean using a computer to generate the sounds used in music. That's an interesting topic but not what I intended. I meant using a computer to compose music. So, for example, using a computer to work out the details of complex musical processes, maybe stochastic ones.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> He died in 2006, I believe Spectrum 6 was composed in 2001. I can provide you with some references to get the gen about the programme he used to compose it if you want.


I got the date wrong - apologies. Your thread title implies that a computer wrote the music as opposed to a human...I haven't seen anything in the reviews I have read that suggests that.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Here, there are details starting at page 119

https://www.researchgate.net/profil...5cadcb/The-Spectral-Music-of-James-Tenney.pdf



janxharris said:


> I got the date wrong - apologies. Your thread title implies that a computer wrote the music as opposed to a human...I haven't seen anything in the reviews I have read that suggests that.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> I didn't mean using a computer to generate the sounds used in music. That's an interesting topic but not what I intended. I meant using a computer to compose music. So, for example, using a computer to work out the details of complex musical processes, maybe stochastic ones.


When I was interested in writing electro-acoustic music, or some straight classical music, I used a notation software program (Finale) with fairly sophisticated instrument sample libraries for MIDI sound production.

The main benefit of using the notation software (aside from creating a engraved copy of the score) was the ability to manipulate my thematic material, e.g. inversions, retrograde procedures were easily done using the software, as well as transpositions. I could also change the durations of a phrase, doubling the note lengths or halving them (or any multiple), create sequences of the same material at different pitch levels. It made developing my thematic material easier than having to manually write it out.

Then I could hear the results immediately and make adjustments as I felt necessary.

With this notation software I could also upload an audio track of electronic tracks I'd composed using a different software application. This generated a visual wave file, where I could write the music to coincide with peaks and pauses in the electronic track.

I did this for a few years and then grew tired of it and haven't done anything for a while.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> When I was interested in writing electro-acoustic music, or some straight classical music, I used a notation software program (Finale) with fairly sophisticated instrument sample libraries for MIDI sound production.
> 
> The main benefit of using the notation software (aside from creating a engraved copy of the score) was the ability to manipulate my thematic material, e.g. inversions, retrograde procedures were easily done using the software, as well as transpositions. I could also change the durations of a phrase, doubling the note lengths or halving them (or any multiple), create sequences of the same material at different pitch levels. It made developing my thematic material easier than having to manually write it out.
> 
> ...


Yes, there have been machines for doing that sort of manipulation since Bach's time - I've got a book somewhere about c18 century fugue generating machines.

I was listening to some early Reich this morning, the clapping music, and I can see no reason why the canons there shouldn't have been generated by a computer.

Let me know what you think of the way that article says Tenney used a programme to compose Spectrum 6.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> They've been being used for the past 60 years at least, and AI hasn't taken over so far. This computer composed piece by Xenakis is very Ligeti like I think -- immersive and contrapuntal, I don't know if Ligeti made computer generated clouds.


Wait, is Bohor composed by a computer or did Xenakis use a computer to compose it? Two different things. If it's the first, I had no idea it was so. I love that work.

EDIT: Ahh, now I see what you mean. Of course, who could have a problem with using technology to compose music?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

allaroundmusicenthusiast said:


> Wait, is Bohor composed by a computer or did Xenakis use a computer to compose it? Two different things. If it's the first, I had no idea it was so. I love that work.


Actually I'm not sure any more, I had it in my head that he developed a stochastic composing algorithm which he used for Bohor but now you challenge me I can't find the evidence to support it.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

I started using Finale in the 1990s and still use it…it’s a great program (for the most part). It comes with a large collection of sampled sounds from a company name Garritan. Some of the sounds are very accurate, some not so. I have considered purchasing a top line library of sampled sounds such as those offered by Vienna Symphonic Library but they are pricey. Instead for the last couple of years I have been using NotePerformer which is AI-based and is superior to Garritan in regard to sound accuracy in most cases. And it is very reasonably priced at $129.

SanAntone listed the various compositional manipulations offered in Finale. I am currently working on some prolation canons and the functionality wherein note lengths can be increased and decreased proportionally comes in very handy. I have also used the inversion and retrograde functionality.

And I love the ability to play back what I have written and adjust accordingly. And the ability to create sound files has come in handy when submitting scores for competitions. They are not as good as having a recording of a real performance but are better than nothing.

He mentioned creating an engraved copy of the score. The same applies to parts. For those of us who remember notating final versions of scores and parts by hand, whether pencil on manuscript paper or ink on onionskin (printed with the Ozalid process), programs like Finale and Sibelius are a godsend. (Music typewriters were also used back in the day but I never used one myself.)


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## BoggyB (May 6, 2016)

This:

David Cope: Bach By Design, Computer Composed Music Experiments In Musical Intelligence

Tracks are on youtube


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

allaroundmusicenthusiast said:


> I don't know if I could listen to and enjoy a piece made by a computer.





BoggyB said:


> This: David Cope. Tracks are on YouTube







Indeed. David Cope loaded a bunch of classical music into the program he created, Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI, or Emmy) and told the computer to produce new works in the style of some composer. He's done Bach, he's done Chopin, he's done Mozart, he's done Beethoven, he's done Joplin. The pieces that resulted -- when played by real musicians, not the MIDI files he first released -- are pleasant enough pastiches, not very original of course but passable as tributes to the composers.

As AI gets better, more and more original music will result.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

NoCoPilot said:


> Indeed. David Cope loaded a bunch of classical music into the program he created, Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI, or Emmy) and told the computer to produce new works in the style of some composer. He's done Bach, he's done Chopin, he's done Mozart, he's done Beethoven, he's done Joplin. The pieces that resulted -- when played by real musicians, not the MIDI files he first released -- are pleasant enough pastiches, not very original of course but passable as tributes to the composers.
> 
> As AI gets better, more and more original music will result.


Emmy's "Beethoven Symphony no. 10" is an awful symphony. I've listened to the first and second movements.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

This was actually better than some of the garbage I heard at a new music festival given by composition students at a nearby university.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> Here's a piece I love composed with a computer - do you know any others?


Um.

Well.

This "music" is annoying.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

NoCoPilot said:


> Indeed. David Cope loaded a bunch of classical music into the program he created, Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI, or Emmy) and told the computer to produce new works in the style of some composer. He's done Bach, he's done Chopin, he's done Mozart, he's done Beethoven, he's done Joplin. The pieces that resulted -- when played by real musicians, not the MIDI files he first released -- are pleasant enough pastiches, not very original of course but passable as tributes to the composers.
> 
> As AI gets better, more and more original music will result.


Why? ..................................................


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Why not?.........


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

NoCoPilot said:


> Why not?.........


I don't see the point in creating derivative music, it is bad enough when done by humans but there is zero point to make useless music with a computer. Unless this is a path to developing useful AI, I think it is a waste of time and could offer people bad examples of "classical" music which would then allow them to think that all classical music was mediocre.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Sounds like an argument against schools offering curriculum and internships in classical music to me.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

NoCoPilot said:


> Sounds like an argument against schools offering curriculum and internships in classical music to me.


I have no idea how you came to that conclusion. I said nothing about offering music curriculum in schools, certainly not arguing against it.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

_Agony_ by İlhan Mimaroğlu


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> _Agony_ by İlhan Mimaroğlu


I really don't know how this was composed, the basis of the organisation. Is there some sort of process or is it entirely intuitive? No doubt computers were used to generate the sounds, but whether it goes further than that is unclear to me.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> I really don't know how this was composed. Is there some sort of process or is it entirely intuitive?


Not done with a computer, put together with electronic sound sources to tape.



> Description from vinyl cover:
> Like the majority of Mimaroglu's compositions in the tape music medium, Agony reflects an attitude toward the false issue of electronic music vs. music concrete. On the occasion of its first performance on November 10, 1965, in the course of a braodcast on Turkish contemporary music over WBAI in NYC, the composer made the following comment: "the sound sources here are purely electronic, although the piece might give the impression of my having used natural sounds as well, or that its imagery calls for associations with definite or indefinite concrete objects. The extent of the transformation the medium can bring into whatever one selects as sound source is sufficient to make fanatical adherence to one or the other sound source category esthetically futile."


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> I don't see the point in creating derivative music, it is bad enough when done by humans but there is zero point to make useless music with a computer. Unless this is a path to developing useful AI, I think it is a waste of time and could offer people bad examples of "classical" music which would then allow them to think that all classical music was mediocre.


It depends what you mean by derivative. Some composers today sample parts of existing music, and then use computer programmes to generate variations, a sort of process music but with a process rule so complex that it's good to have a computer to do the hard work. This is based on Mozart's K331, the Turkish March.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> It depends what you mean by derivative. Some composers today sample parts of existing music, and then use computer programmes to generate variations, a sort of process music but with a process rule so complex that it's good to have a computer to do the hard work. This is based on Mozart's K331, the Turkish March.


What I meant was based on the description of the computer programing: inputting the musical data of works by Chopin, Beethoven and other classical composers and then having the computer generate "new" works in the style of these composers based on that data bank of information.

This is derivative music. Not much different from what Alma Deutscher does with her inane imitation of Brahms.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> I didn't mean using a computer to generate the sounds used in music. That's an interesting topic but not what I intended. I meant using a computer to compose music. So, for example, using a computer to work out the details of complex musical processes, maybe stochastic ones.


Well if you're talking stochastic processes the classic example is Douglas Leedy's monumental, and monumentally boring, "Entropical Paradise."


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

NoCoPilot said:


> Well if you're talking stochastic processes the classic example is Douglas Leedy's monumental, and monumentally boring, "Entropical Paradise."


It's hard to know what to make of this sort of thing. It certainly isn't structural.

I can only speak from experience -- not with this but with, for example, long form Feldman, or the Cage number pieces or minimalist music like The Well Tuned Piano, or various experimental pieces by Alvin Lucier. IMO it works best when you're in the frame of mind to submit, to allow yourself to become submerged. Then it can be quite satisfying.

But I know other people who think that these immersive pieces are really just another example of mainstream classical music -- as mainstream as many Haydn symphonies, or baroque tafelmusik. That's to say, you talk over it, do the ironing while it's playing etc. I personally don't care for that approach -- I prefer total immersion.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> I know other people who think that these immersive pieces are really just another example of mainstream classical music -- as mainstream as many Haydn symphonies, or baroque tafelmusik.


I prefer at least a HINT of melody and harmonic development. Stochastic music seems like the antithesis, and a very lazy way to "compose."


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

ORigel said:


> Emmy's "Beethoven Symphony no. 10" is an awful symphony. I've listened to the first and second movements.


Beethoven perhaps more than the others does not lend himself to pastiches or approximations. His music is pretty far from 'formulaic.'


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

NoCoPilot said:


> I prefer at least a HINT of melody and harmonic development. Stochastic music seems like the antithesis, and a very lazy way to "compose."


Well I'm pretty lazy myself, or at least that's what my teachers would tell me when I was at school. And when I listen to music I don't assess it like an infant school teacher. I'm more interested in finding a way to make sense of what he is doing. I'm not saying I've succeeded in this case.

As far as development of any kind, melodic or harmonic or whatever, I personally can take it or leave it, probably a preference to leave it for me.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> It's hard to know what to make of this sort of thing. It certainly isn't structural.
> 
> I can only speak from experience -- not with this but with, for example, long form Feldman, or the Cage number pieces or minimalist music like The Well Tuned Piano, or various experimental pieces by Alvin Lucier. IMO it works best when you're in the frame of mind to submit, to allow yourself to become submerged. Then it can be quite satisfying.
> 
> But I know other people who think that these immersive pieces are really just another example of mainstream classical music -- as mainstream as many Haydn symphonies, or baroque tafelmusik. That's to say, you talk over it, do the ironing while it's playing etc. I personally don't care for that approach -- I prefer total immersion.


I just don't like the synthesized sounds; electronic sounds, especially these early ones, do not interest me and as such the music created with them, also, is not interesting to me. The acoustic music of Feldman and Cage is immediately more interesting because of the piano and other acoustic instruments.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> I just don't like the synthesized sounds; electronic sounds, especially these early ones, do not interest me and as such the music created with them, also, is not interesting to me. The acoustic music of Feldman and Cage is immediately more interesting because of the piano and other acoustic instruments.


For me those synthesisers have a sort of retro feel which I can enjoy, in the right frame of mind. There's a side of me which almost prefers the sound of older electronics to the very "clean" sound of digital music. This, for me, is one of the towering masterpieces of music


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Ii have a couple friends that do it. I went to copy one from one's FB page but it says the content isn't available right now.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

NoCoPilot said:


> ...





Mandryka said:


> It's hard to know what to make of this sort of thing. ...


Not really. That's the music I hear playing in the spaceship every time I get abducted by those dang aliens.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> For me those synthesisers have a sort of retro feel which I can enjoy, in the right frame of mind. There's a side of me which almost prefers the sound of older electronics to the very "clean" sound of digital music. This, for me, is one of the towering masterpieces of music


I guess I am not much interested in electronic music, electronic sounds. And this is across all genres. I prefer acoustic jazz, folk, blues, bluegrass, even rock, the unplugged concerts,. Acoustic instruments playing anything is better IMO.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

SanAntone said:


> I guess I am not much interested in electronic music, electronic sounds. And this is across all genres. I prefer acoustic jazz, folk, blues, bluegrass, even rock, the unplugged concerts,. Acoustic instruments playing anything is better IMO.


It's encouraging to know that someone out there prefers this






to the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Actually, Stockhausen would probably like this. He did, after all, write a five-hour-long opera, _Mittwoch aus Licht_, which features camels in the cast.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SONNET CLV said:


> It's encouraging to know that someone out there prefers this
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That has a spooky resemblance to this


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

The limits of artificial intelligence (AI) are endless. It's not unreasonable to suppose that computers will be able to analyze brain scans that reveal how combinations of sound relax or stimulate the brain in ways where dopamine (the "pleasure" neurotransmitter) is released. Whether or not "inspiration" is the essential element remains to be seen. Some composers attributed their master craftsmanship to God, as if the music had already existed prior to it's creation. Mozart was one of them, and so was Stravinsky. Stravinsky said that he did not so much create _Rite of Spring_ but was more the "Vessel though which it passed."

Therefore, AI will be able to sort through all musical possibilities like the infinite amount of monkeys and the infinite amount of typewriters bringing forth all the works of _Shakespeare_, the _King James Bible_, the _Rig Veda_, the _Upanishads_, _Moby Dick_, _Homer's Odyssey_, etc.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> That has a spooky resemblance to this


As the jazzmen used to say: "That's the same cat playin' that, man".


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Aliens from the future actually created Schubert and brought him to the 19th century. He was a 500 year machine learning study on Mozart.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> I just don't like the synthesized sounds; electronic sounds, especially these early ones, do not interest me and as such the music created with them, also, is not interesting to me. The acoustic music of Feldman and Cage is immediately more interesting because of the piano and other acoustic instruments.


Different strokes, different folks.

I find solo piano music to be (mostly) deadly boring due to the very limited sounds you can get out of a percussion box. There are only so many things you can do with the same 12 notes, over and over. :lol:

With synthesizers you have a whole new world of timbre to explore.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

NoCoPilot said:


> Indeed. David Cope loaded a bunch of classical music into the program he created, Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI, or Emmy) and told the computer to produce new works in the style of some composer. He's done Bach, he's done Chopin, he's done Mozart, he's done Beethoven, he's done Joplin. The pieces that resulted -- when played by real musicians, not the MIDI files he first released -- are pleasant enough pastiches, not very original of course but passable as tributes to the composers.
> 
> As AI gets better, more and more original music will result.


I don't feel that is really that convincing as Chopin. I'll check out the others.

This don't feel that convincing as Mozart either.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

SanAntone said:


> I just don't like the synthesized sounds; electronic sounds, especially these early ones, do not interest me and as such the music created with them, also, is not interesting to me. The acoustic music of Feldman and Cage is immediately more interesting because of the piano and other acoustic instruments.


I mistakenly posted this in unpopular opinion thread:


Ethereality said:


> I actually really enjoy MIDI synth for some performances, because I do a lot of sequencing and always loved the clarity of voices it has.


To clarify, with instrumentation I'm mostly both anti-synth and anti-classical. I always thought Classical composers like _Mozart_ would do better composing for more ethnic instruments of drums and unique winds and guitar-type instruments. Some strings are fine. Hence why I enjoy RPG music and New Age personally, the diversity and eclecticism. Hence why this video sounds like Uematsu but without the creative instrumentation.

I enjoy real instrumentation but those of novelty--not really wildness, but holistic balance.


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

I'm minded to draw a parallel with maths here.
I believe that the 4-colour theorem (that you need no more than 4 colours to colour a map such that the same colour does not occur on opposite sides of a line border - although it can appear on opposite sides of a point border) was proved making extensive use of computer calculations. I think the humans did work to identify classes of situations which could occur, and a computer than exhaustively ploughed through making sure that the theorem was not violated in any possible situation. (It's not my field, so I may not be quite correct about the process.)

Anyway, the point is that some mathematicians didn't like that style of proof, as maths is a social activity, which is about persuading others of the validity of the proof, and in the process extending the human understanding of (in a sense) why the result is what it is. You don't expand human understanding much if the working through of the proof is outsourced to a machine: you just observe the answer.

The opposing view is that the human content of the proof is the conceptualisation of the problem which is necessary to write the computer program, and the construction of the code in such a way that other humans are satisfied that it works. The brute force computation is, in that view, not where the human and social content of the exercise resides anyway.

I think, though, that most would agree that an elegant proof which could be written by a human on one sheet of paper and which revealed an understanding of the problem with a sort of "eureka" moment would be better.

I believe (- though you may disagree) that there is a pretty good parallel here.
Music written by a computer is really being written by whoever constructed the program, the person who conceptualised the way in which the program would generate the piece. I assume you're going to need some sort of random input as well, as without that the program would generate the same output every time, even just (say) some manipulation of the time it starts running or a random number generator of some sort, but that doesn't invalidate the point that it is the writing of the code which is where the "music" resides, if there is any.

Another thought is that you want some feedback from a listener. Until you get to the point where computers are music critics (or better, buyers) then there should be an evolutionary process whereby computer-composed music might fail (if no one wants to listen to it) and succeed (if that computer style generates a listener base). You might then envisage that one "computer style" would reproduce into related programs, and others would fail to reproduce, all through demand or lack of it. As long as "humans" are the generators of that demand then maybe the musical content is generated by that selective process, driven by humans. I quite like the idea of the listeners to music being given the power, rather than the composers - more democratic.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

There’s another way to see this. Composers can decided every aspect of a composition - pitch, duration, attack, ornamentation, phrasing, timbre, instrument etc. They may write a computer algorithm to help them choose some of these aspects, in more or less complex ways, possibly introducing elements of probability. That’s what James Tenney did in that cycle I like so much, the Spectrum Pieces, which I posted at the start of this thread. 


It’s a generalisation of total serialism I suppose, bringing computers to the sort of processes pioneered years ago by Cage, Boulez, Stockhausen . . .


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