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Topic: Impossible composition, Beethoven style | Composed by AI | Musica ex Machina (Read 3088 times) previous topic - next topic

Impossible composition, Beethoven style | Composed by AI | Musica ex Machina

Musica ex Machina plublished on youtube :

I told OpenAI's MuseNet to compose something in the style of Beethoven, and also told it to work completely from scracth.
After a few (hundreds of) attempts, it came up with this. I'm sure Ludwig would have appreciated this fierce and wonderful monstrosity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9uHIi8uz70

Scary, isn't it?

Bart

Re: Impossible composition, Beethoven style | Composed by AI | Musica ex Machina

Reply #1 –
Nice. I like m. 71! It sounds a little bit like the "pieces" I improvised on the piano when I was 16 - loud, fast, "Beethovenian", resulting in much headache for my mother (she was a musician - singer - and prone to headache) ...

One can see the patterns (harmonic; harmonic progressions; melodic; rhythmic) the machine has learned, and also some obvious ones (especially longer-range ones) it completely missed.

What I somehow wonder: Was this intended as a piano piece for one player? If so, doesn't the program have some idea of how large my hands are?

And: The 3/4 time signature is obviously and blatantly wrong for most parts (some have no rhythmic structure at all, there you can't tell). Did you add the 3/4 after the fact, or did the AI believe this was what it used when "composing"?

There is this article in the Guardian about a text written by an AI - it seems somewhat similar in that also there, one can see the "patterns that made it"; and how only huge editing gets you an acceptable result.

Of course, "doing things like XY" will be done by a machine at some point of time - just as power dredges completely replace people for excavating. Money to be made there, and "copying composers" will lose their jobs, just as all the (poor) shovelling people.

H.M.

Re: Impossible composition, Beethoven style | Composed by AI | Musica ex Machina

Reply #2 –
Well, Rachmaninoff had big hands...  :D   But this, umm, it rather sounds like Ludwig on speed rather than music he really would have written...  :P
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Impossible composition, Beethoven style | Composed by AI | Musica ex Machina

Reply #3 –
Interesting. Aside from the tempo, and the need to employ a couple of very agile octopuses with hands at the ends of their tentacles to play it, it DOES sound vaguely like something a third-rate composer might produce while trying to write music like Beethoven. It's got all of the clichés and none of the imagination.

Re: Impossible composition, Beethoven style | Composed by AI | Musica ex Machina

Reply #4 –
I'm doing my PhD in music as we speak, and I attended a research presentation on AI and composition recently. It's interesting to see what is being accomplished. Apparently the industry is making giant steps forward, especially in relation to low budget films and tv, to the dismay of composers in that field.