# Computer-generated classical music



## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

What do you think of this?

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6884631.ece

Here's a review of two of the pieces:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6884606.ece

I think it sounds like Ludovico Einaudi.


----------



## nickgray (Sep 28, 2008)

Huh? Symphony No.314 In A Major, Op.15926 by Quantum Computer Cluster, designation Theta-53589. Nah, not gonna happen... I hope...


----------



## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

It makes me suspicious about "Einaudi." I've seen pictures of him playing the piano, but they could easily be faked.


----------



## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I rather liked the fugue snippet presented. I think this method does work better with baroque counterpoint where the rules are fairly stringent and a computer could sift through them rather quickly. It then becomes a matter of interpretation. How would the pieces sound played by Andras Schiff for instance?

Obviously from my avatar picture I embrace the newer technologies in music and the arts. I recognize that compositions by computer are not going to be as inspired as those of a great human master, but_ I _couldn't have written that fugue. I can see this being a great tool for composers who may be pressed for time. Say there is a great piece started but the composer is not sure where to go with it or how to develop it. The computer might quickly suggest several alternative directions without a lot of time consuming work.

All this is going to be moot soon. We already have devices allowing completely paralyzed people to operate a computer by thought alone. It's only a matter of time before we only need to imagine the sounds in our minds and have the computer create them -- composition by day dreaming.


----------



## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

All profound world-view is mysticism, the essence of which is just this: that out of my unsophisticated and naive existence in the world there comes, as a result of thought about self and the world, spiritual self-devotion to the mysterious infinite Will which is continuously manifested in the universe.


----------



## Cortision (Aug 4, 2009)

Aramis said:


> All profound world-view is mysticism, the essence of which is just this: that out of my unsophisticated and naive existence in the world there comes, as a result of thought about self and the world, spiritual self-devotion to the mysterious infinite Will which is continuously manifested in the universe.


Come again?


----------



## Gangsta Tweety Bird (Jan 25, 2009)

i have a cd by this guy david cope, its pretty cool. would be cool to get this technology working in real time and with midi or something then make an installation that responds to movement of people in a room so the style of the music changes accordingly


----------



## Texas Chain Saw Mazurka (Nov 1, 2009)

Weston said:


> I recognize that compositions by computer are not going to be as inspired as those of a great human master,


That's something of an article of faith. People might be less comfortable in saying that 50 or 100 or 200 years from now, which may lead to some awkward situations. Even if computers are merely writing 'very very good' rather than 'great' music, that's nothing to blow off.


----------



## dmg (Sep 13, 2009)

When people invent artificial emotion, there might be a challenge. Until then, I don't see it happening.


----------



## Joaf (Oct 22, 2009)

I was getting a bit worried about this whole advent of the souless composer thing. Mostly, I was concerned that proper composers could be accused of having their work written by a computer. Then a solution came to me.

Having a computer churn out a piece of music is one thing, but ensuring that piece sounds good is another. Formulae, that is hitherto unknown, producing good music would have to be written into the software. If composers, and musicians in general, who are opposed to computer composing got together and created a website, they could use it to stave off allegations of composing via software. Here is how: every month or two months or whatever, "rules" are given which most be followed in the composition of a piece (i.e. rule 1: the melody in 12th, 17th, 34th measure must not contain the supertonic. Rule 2: in measures 19, 21, and 3 must contain 4 minims, etc). These rules would be proof that the piece was not computer written. The more rules are written, the harder it would be for the designers of the software to make sure the software "composes" music that both sounds good and obeys the rules, because every rule would render a portion of its formulae inapplicable, and inobedience of the rules would expose it as computer written. If the software were to somehow reconcile rule-following with quality music and thus lend itself to exploitation by fraudulent composers, there would still be problems, since the software would have to be re-written with the issuing of every new set of rules. This would make en masse marketing of such software financially unviable.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

I'd be curious to read opinions about this: "Hello world!"_ arguably the first full-scale work entirely composed by a computer without any human intervention and automatically written in a fully-fledged score using conventional musical notation,_ as wiki says





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iamus_%28computer%29

I've found it lovely (and for some reason it reminds me a bit of Messiaen)


----------



## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

Ours is an age of improved means to deteriorated ends.


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Personally I do not mind much who or what wrote the music, as long as it is beautiful. The human brain is a mechanism, however fantastically complicated, so in principle it should be possible to get computers to do just about anything the human mind can do.

But another question occurred to me: if you have a computer compose your music, can't the machine sue you for copyright infringement?


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I'm not sure exactly what to make of it. I sampled sections, as I didn't have the patience to listen to it in its entirety. I think it sounds somewhat garbled :tiphat: It has aspects of a lot of contemporary music, so it is somewhat a pastiche, I suppose, but if you told me it was composed by a real person, who knows what I would have said  It doesn't sound even vaguely like Messiaen to me.

I find the concept of computer generation antithetical to my idea of music and composition. I want to hear a composer of my choosing. Like I said on another thread, I am not so much interested in the biographical details of a composer's life, but when I discover someone's work that speaks to me, I like to follow what they are doing. I look forward to hearing older works I had not yet heard and new works that have just come out (just composed, just recorded, etc.).

To use a computer to create 'music' takes the human element out of music-making (it could be argued that the programmer of the computer is the real composer, since his it is his algorithm that directs the computer), which, in a sense, as I said, is an essential part of composition and music to me. Also, it reduces the making of new music to setting up a computer program and letting it run. This cheapens music and its meaning. Sure, there have been composers, some of whom I am very fond of, eg., Xenakis, who used computers to generate data that they used in their compositions, but for a computer to autonomously compose is a leap beyond.


----------



## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

brianvds said:


> But another question occurred to me: if you have a computer compose your music, can't the machine sue you for copyright infringement?


No, but under most jurisdictions, the owner of the computer or whoever pushed the "Compose" button probably can.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

brotagonist said:


> I'm not sure exactly what to make of it. I sampled sections, as I didn't have the patience to listen to it in its entirety. I think it sounds somewhat garbled :tiphat: It has aspects of a lot of contemporary music, so it is somewhat a pastiche, I suppose, but if you told me it was composed by a real person, who knows what I would have said  It doesn't sound even vaguely like Messiaen to me.
> 
> I find the concept of computer generation antithetical to my idea of music and composition. I want to hear a composer of my choosing. Like I said on another thread, I am not so much interested in the biographical details of a composer's life, but when I discover someone's work that speaks to me, I like to follow what they are doing. I look forward to hearing older works I had not yet heard and new works that have just come out (just composed, just recorded, etc.).
> 
> To use a computer to create 'music' takes the human element out of music-making (it could be argued that the programmer of the computer is the real composer, since his it is his algorithm that directs the computer), which, in a sense, as I said, is an essential part of composition and music to me. Also, it reduces the making of new music to setting up a computer program and letting it run. This cheapens music and its meaning. Sure, there have been composers, some of whom I am very fond of, eg., Xenakis, who used computers to generate data that they used in their compositions, but for a computer to autonomously compose is a leap beyond.


I think of music in a sense as a way to understand the human brain. In this sense I find very fascinating to ear a score produced by a machine, because it could be seen as another point of view on the same think, namely a comparison with the choices made by a program with those made by a human. The effect of the piece is very relaxing, like a wind harp where the program has the same effect of natural elements, like here:





And detached like the Art of the fugue: after all, the best imitation of a composer made by the program of David Cope was that of Bach (maybe because the fugue is for its nature a music of procedures)


----------



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Here's the computer music I "imprinted" on:






I still like it. It's available on CD.

http://www.amazon.com/Lejaren-Hille...411759330&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=Ljaren+Hiller


----------



## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Fsharpmajor said:


> What do you think of this?
> 
> http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6884631.ece
> 
> ...


I've long been fond of the work that won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in Music: Charles Wourinen's _Time's Encomium_, an electronic, four channel, musical composition for synthesized and processed synthesized sound, commissioned by Teresa Sterne for Nonesuch Records, and realized on the RCA Mark II Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, NYC. I originally obtained the LP and have since gotten the CD. It's a wonderful bit of sound magic that bounces around from speaker to speaker, with nary a performing instrumental musician anywhere in the picture. Who needs instruments or players when you've got an RCA Mark II!










Still ... I'm waiting for the Bach, Mozart, or Beethovens of computers. I've had a DELL and an HP, but they were both rather run-of-the-mill, nothing special, certainly nothing in the realm of genius. But imagine what sounds a Tchaikovsky, Brahms, or Mahler computer could make. Or a Schoenberg or Boulez computer. Ah ... if I can only live long enough.


----------



## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

I might be naive but I don't see how computers can truly CREATE music.
There surely must be some type of human "creative" input behind it (by the programmer), however thin the set of instructions it took him to start the composing phase by the computer.


----------

