How will smart software (artificial intelligence) influence the perception and creation of music?

[Timfonie]

... The OP posted it exactly at the time you proposed to him...

Must say I'm allready engaged by heart and mind watching the singular most wonderful brainchild approach.

[Tj Shredder]

AI can literally be fed by all available literature, films, music, news, commercials etc and human reactions to them. Our collective history and heritage.

That is exactly why its useless for creative art.

Mine was response to someone who thought AIs don't have experiences- which is false, they can have much more experiences than any human can.

Mine was, that its useless today, though it probably could already replace the average mainstream composer. But those pieces have no human story bound to it, they are a fake, or in other words sofisticated kitsch. Very useful for advertising though, not for art...

It won't happen until AI passes a Turing test. (I don't mean Eliza which could fool some fools already in the mid of last century)
I was really impressed about the Bach project with its 5000 chorales, high quality composing, but only in the style of Bach. But if you teach a deep network with all the music before Cage, I doubt they would come even close to any of the big names after. The same network would need to capture also text, talk, food, sex with its feelings, relations to other brains etc.
The concept of AI is so much focused on a single brain, but a single brain is just like a single neutron, its not the whole story...
AI evolution will happen, but today its not yet creative.
I would not hesitate though to use the current state in a creative way...

[Tj Shredder]

Yes, you can teach a neural network to compose like Bach, but he gave us already plenty of it, we long for Cage...; - )

I would bet $1000 against any artificial ANYTHING composing an imitation Bach piece well enough to fool anyone with an IQ of 75 or higher who had even a passing familiarity with his music.

Being able to write this sentence approves that I have an IQ higher than 75, and I do have a passing familarity with his music. The chorales David Cope produced with the aid of his AI already 2010 passed that test. You owe him $1000 ; - )
I have no doubt that you are able to hear the difference.
Still, it is not interesting as a musical result to compose like Bach, but if some human would train herself to improvise like Bach, I would not mind and love to listen to it...

[herodotus]

Yes, you can teach a neural network to compose like Bach, but he gave us already plenty of it, we long for Cage...; - )

I would bet $1000 against any artificial ANYTHING composing an imitation Bach piece well enough to fool anyone with an IQ of 75 or higher who had even a passing familiarity with his music.

Being able to write this sentence approves that I have an IQ higher than 75, and I do have a passing familarity with his music. The chorales David Cope produced with the aid of his AI already 2010 passed that test. You owe him $1000 ; - )
I have no doubt that you are able to hear the difference.
Still, it is not interesting as a musical result to compose like Bach, but if some human would train herself to improvise like Bach, I would not mind and love to listen to it...

Interesting. The resulting compositions are really a digital pastiche, considering the massive amount of Bach's music Cope fed into his system. But still, it is interesting.

But before I pay up, I will need some documentation.

[Jace-BeOS]

ooh kvr wedding
ill ned a new hat!

I'm not the marrying kind

[Tj Shredder]

Interesting. The resulting compositions are really a digital pastiche, considering the massive amount of Bach's music Cope fed into his system. But still, it is interesting.

But before I pay up, I will need some documentation.

Don't worry, I won't tell him...; - )

Actually I was following algorithmic composition quite a while, even simple Markov chains could already produce somthing which at least didn't sound wrong back in the 70s. But my theory was always that one difference you insisted on as well is, the result was boring... Until I came across David Cope... Now I say, oh yes, you even get musical surprises in the style of Bach, but the value of such a research is more of scientific nature, it might help us understanding what is pleasing us as humans. I does not help to change the musical world or invent new styles of expression...

[herodotus]

Interesting. The resulting compositions are really a digital pastiche, considering the massive amount of Bach's music Cope fed into his system. But still, it is interesting.

But before I pay up, I will need some documentation.

Don't worry, I won't tell him...; - )

Actually I was following algorithmic composition quite a while, even simple Markov chains could already produce somthing which at least didn't sound wrong back in the 70s. But my theory was always that one difference you insisted on as well is, the result was boring... Until I came across David Cope... Now I say, oh yes, you even get musical surprises in the style of Bach, but the value of such a research is more of scientific nature, it might help us understanding what is pleasing us as humans. I does not help to change the musical world or invent new styles of expression...

Well, humans can barely do that. Asking AI to do what humans are barely capable of seems a lot to ask for.

Maybe, instead of taking one composer's works and asking EMI to analyze it, try taking, say, works by Beethoven, Merzbow, Ligeti, and Tom Waits, tell EMI they are all the same guy, and THEN see what it comes up with.

[Tj Shredder]

Maybe, instead of taking one composer's works and asking EMI to analyze it, try taking, say, works by Beethoven, Merzbow, Ligeti, and Tom Waits, tell EMI they are all the same guy, and THEN see what it comes up with.

That will probably have a result simmilar to the painting nudes AI. It might have its aesthetic value, but only if you deliver the complete context as a story. The creativ act is to define which composers you choose to be scrambled. You should report your composition of Beethoven, Merzbow, Ligeti, and Tom Waits to your authors rights association...; - )

[herodotus]

Maybe, instead of taking one composer's works and asking EMI to analyze it, try taking, say, works by Beethoven, Merzbow, Ligeti, and Tom Waits, tell EMI they are all the same guy, and THEN see what it comes up with.

That will probably have a result simmilar to the painting nudes AI. It might have its aesthetic value, but only if you deliver the complete context as a story. The creativ act is to define which composers you choose to be scrambled. You should report your composition of Beethoven, Merzbow, Ligeti, and Tom Waits to your authors rights association...; - )

I am claiming fair use.

[herodotus]

As for the story as context, how about: "Beethoven, Merzbow, Ligeti and Tom Waits walk into a bar....."

[vurt]

the barmaid asked "what can i get you?"

[Aloysius]

the customer said ''a barmaid''

[herodotus]

the barmaid asked "what can i get you?"

Beethoven asks for a beer, Merzbow for sake, and Ligeti asks for Sambuca shaken over ice.

Tom Waits says "look at that sexy barmaid", drinks everyone's drinks in a nanosecond, and runs out the door before anyone can turn around.

[Brother Greg]

I’m looking at the original questions, and my takes are these:

Low-paying and “free” subscription music-streaming sites, more than anything else, have killed income for most compositions. Why buy a CD or even a music file if you can hear it for free, or almost for free? If the composer gets just $1 for a thousand listens, it’s hard to make money that way.

As for AI-generated music, the question for me is, “What kind of music are we talking about?” DJs can now construct, rather than compose, music, using a bunch of music loops, including drum loops, by mixing and matching among them. There’s no need to even know how play a keyboard. The jump from that to AI-generated music isn’t much of a jump. But that music is very different from someone playing a guitar and singing lyrics.

It strikes me that the instrument you play has a way of influencing what kind of music you compose. My observation is that a pianist is likely to come up with different kinds of compositions than a guitarist. And the same goes for music software.

My impression is that music software has a way of steering composers toward music done in one key, without much melody but with a focus on rhythms, sound variations, and textures. It’s relatively easy to do this. It takes extra effort on the part of the composer to shift keys, develop melodies and counterpoint, etc., using music software. What quickly gets lost is the sensibility of an instrumentalist. You don’t have to know how to play an instrument anymore to compose music with music software. And that’s how software music starts to sound more and more the same, making inroads from AI software more likely to take hold. Meanwhile, listeners get trained to expect a kind of sameness in the music they listen to, and this also provides fertile ground for AI compositions.

In my opinion, originality in composing with music software demands some kind of musicianship on the part of the composer, who is willing to break out of the mold that music software presents to recall what makes music music. This takes continuous awareness and effort.

[Aloysius]

So you're saying it's a conspiracy? The AI creators are actively destroying traditional music making skills with DAWs, so the robots can seamlessly take over their role.