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I still think it would be a hugely easier to automatically produce a plausible pop song than a piece of music from the Classical era (c. 1770-1820). The output

by dfan 11y ago

I still think it would be a hugely easier to automatically produce a plausible pop song than a piece of music from the Classical era (c. 1770-1820). The output of this neural net is really neat but (at this point) there is no way that it would ever be mistaken for an actual classical piece by an educated listener, and it still seems pretty far from that. (David Cope has produced some really impressive output, but I still think it would have taken a lot less effort to produce pop music.)

tehchromic 11y ago
I agree, if we are speaking about composition alone for example comparing two pieces played on the same piano. But what I think is interesting about the contrast is how pop music has evolved into a science of performance, and while I think a computer synthesizer and algorithm can render a convincing performance of Bach, the same can't be said of pop music. I know that we don't have the real Back here to perform, but that's kind of the point of what I am getting at, which is the idea of what these musics actually are in cultural math, if that makes any sense. I say it's easier to replicate the idoms of classical piece than of pop, because pop has complexity in performance, which actually means recordance, if that word exists.
- swombat 11y ago
  I think the problem you're pointing to is not that pop music is somehow more difficult or more performance based - a lot of pop music is basically electronic music and has relatively little performance element. What you're noticing is that music (and not just pop music), and in fact, all art, is anti-inductive [1]. What I mean by that is that our expectations of music are constantly changing and evolving, and the minute something is created that captures our imagination, creating something similar becomes "not that interesting". It would probably be fairly easy to create an engine that produces pop music from the 80s or 90s or even 2000s, but the closer you get to today, the more the music is either a copy/rearrangement of an existing pop song, or it's not recognised as pop music. The very nature of music is constantly reinventing itself, everyone always looking for that "new sound". These neural networks, as they are at the moment, can, it seems, pick up an existing "sound" and learn to reproduce it, but creating "new sound" is another matter, at the moment at least. [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/11/the-phatic-and-the-anti-inductive/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/11/the-phatic-and-the-anti...
  - tehchromic 11y ago
    yep exactly what I am pointing to. I meant performance based in that its complexity comes from how it interacts with culture language, other music, ideas, etc: cultural production. True also of classical composition, but as you say, it's already been done, and so the pattern can be reproduced. I was also adding the idea that the mathematical and notational rule-logic of a lot of classical music lends itself to machine based reproduction in ways that modern pop pastiche does not, and that's counter intuitive as some comments noted, because the actual product itself is entirely machine mediated.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  I say you're wrong - and I'm saying that as someone who has worked on both. Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven are so complex there are no living human composers who can produce convincing imitations - never mind machines. There are a few people who can do clever improvisations in-the-style-of, but that music completely lacks the big structures, broad relationships, and metaphorical depth of the real thing. In comparison, electronic pop styles are much more formulaic, and the forms and changes are much more predictable. I think we're less than ten years away from completely generative pop, vocals, sound design, and all. Good computer generated classical music is going to take quite a while longer.
  - mrob 11y ago
    No human composer will ever produce convincing imitations because the only test that will be accepted as "convincing" is the judgment of an expert. Experts are familiar with the complete works of those famous composers, so they will immediately know the imitation is an imitation. Their knowledge makes them incapable of unbiased judgment. A blind test is impossible. Even tricking the expert into thinking a new genuine work has been discovered won't help, because they will know that is much less likely than an imitation being written. I've listened to a lot of music by those composers, but not all of it, and I'm confident a skilled imitator could fool me.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      That's a different problem. Fooling an amateur isn't so hard - as this thread shows. Fooling a musicologist is much harder. David Cope thinks he's done it already. I'm not entirely convinced, but the output of EMI does a reasonable impersonation of pastiche, which is about as good as it gets for now.
  - mehwoot 11y ago
    I think we're less than ten years away from completely generative pop, vocals, sound design, and all. I highly doubt this, because of the vocals. Generating coherent appealing lyrics and synthesizing voice to sound natural isn't going to happen in 10 years time. Would be really cool if I was wrong, though.

by dfan 11y ago

tehchromic 11y ago

I agree, if we are speaking about composition alone for example comparing two pieces played on the same piano. But what I think is interesting about the contrast is how pop music has evolved into a science of performance, and while I think a computer synthesizer and algorithm can render a convincing performance of Bach, the same can't be said of pop music. I know that we don't have the real Back here to perform, but that's kind of the point of what I am getting at, which is the idea of what these musics actually are in cultural math, if that makes any sense. I say it's easier to replicate the idoms of classical piece than of pop, because pop has complexity in performance, which actually means recordance, if that word exists.

swombat 11y ago
I think the problem you're pointing to is not that pop music is somehow more difficult or more performance based - a lot of pop music is basically electronic music and has relatively little performance element. What you're noticing is that music (and not just pop music), and in fact, all art, is anti-inductive [1]. What I mean by that is that our expectations of music are constantly changing and evolving, and the minute something is created that captures our imagination, creating something similar becomes "not that interesting". It would probably be fairly easy to create an engine that produces pop music from the 80s or 90s or even 2000s, but the closer you get to today, the more the music is either a copy/rearrangement of an existing pop song, or it's not recognised as pop music. The very nature of music is constantly reinventing itself, everyone always looking for that "new sound". These neural networks, as they are at the moment, can, it seems, pick up an existing "sound" and learn to reproduce it, but creating "new sound" is another matter, at the moment at least. [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/11/the-phatic-and-the-anti-inductive/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/11/the-phatic-and-the-anti...
- tehchromic 11y ago
  yep exactly what I am pointing to. I meant performance based in that its complexity comes from how it interacts with culture language, other music, ideas, etc: cultural production. True also of classical composition, but as you say, it's already been done, and so the pattern can be reproduced. I was also adding the idea that the mathematical and notational rule-logic of a lot of classical music lends itself to machine based reproduction in ways that modern pop pastiche does not, and that's counter intuitive as some comments noted, because the actual product itself is entirely machine mediated.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
I say you're wrong - and I'm saying that as someone who has worked on both. Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven are so complex there are no living human composers who can produce convincing imitations - never mind machines. There are a few people who can do clever improvisations in-the-style-of, but that music completely lacks the big structures, broad relationships, and metaphorical depth of the real thing. In comparison, electronic pop styles are much more formulaic, and the forms and changes are much more predictable. I think we're less than ten years away from completely generative pop, vocals, sound design, and all. Good computer generated classical music is going to take quite a while longer.
- mrob 11y ago
  No human composer will ever produce convincing imitations because the only test that will be accepted as "convincing" is the judgment of an expert. Experts are familiar with the complete works of those famous composers, so they will immediately know the imitation is an imitation. Their knowledge makes them incapable of unbiased judgment. A blind test is impossible. Even tricking the expert into thinking a new genuine work has been discovered won't help, because they will know that is much less likely than an imitation being written. I've listened to a lot of music by those composers, but not all of it, and I'm confident a skilled imitator could fool me.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    That's a different problem. Fooling an amateur isn't so hard - as this thread shows. Fooling a musicologist is much harder. David Cope thinks he's done it already. I'm not entirely convinced, but the output of EMI does a reasonable impersonation of pastiche, which is about as good as it gets for now.
- mehwoot 11y ago
  I think we're less than ten years away from completely generative pop, vocals, sound design, and all. I highly doubt this, because of the vocals. Generating coherent appealing lyrics and synthesizing voice to sound natural isn't going to happen in 10 years time. Would be really cool if I was wrong, though.