5 ms·

I'm sure that most of the benefit of using this tool is derived from the fact that the music is consistently low-tempo and relaxing ambient music. Comparing tha

by jkxyz 11y ago

I'm sure that most of the benefit of using this tool is derived from the fact that the music is consistently low-tempo and relaxing ambient music. Comparing that to an album of ambient music, it might not be so consistent in its style and so could distract from the focus. Still, the generated music is quite nice. I still feel that I'd rather listen to a real album, though, created with artistic intent and not computer generated. Music (as a listener and creator) is very important to me and I'm not ready to concede its creation to the machines just yet. Perhaps in a few more years...

mtdewcmu 11y ago
It's putting me to sleep, even though I'm listening through speakers and not headphones.
- shardo 11y ago
  Perhaps it's just your mind getting easily tired from having to focus for large periods of time?
- ahewett 11y ago
  Which category were you listening to? It's definitely a whole different experience with headphones :)
  - mtdewcmu 11y ago
    I picked something sleepy.
    - ahewett 11y ago
      Ah, well, glad it worked then :)
ahewett 11y ago
Hey, this Adam from Brain.fm. I created the music "AI" thing. Glad to have the praise of a musician! My family's very musical, so it took some convincing for them as well. The thing is, it still takes creativity! It took me half a year to create it, and there's a little piece of my soul in this AI. A horcrux, programmed in. :) It makes music how I would make music. Well, most of the time. I had to create the thing because it was taking me a month to create a single session manually, and much of what I had to do was so precise that an algorithm could do it easier. Every note, every beat, has to be perfectly synchronized with the other filters we're applying to the music. So I built some algorithms, but they piled up, had to be constantly re-calibrated based on additions to the music as I kept composing. Keep in mind these are half hour to hour long pieces! And there's no shortcuts - I can't just throw a bunch of music in there, because even the smallest pop/overclip/dissonant moment, could wake someone up, or break their concentration... It just got to a point where something with more working memory than me had to take over. The music in Brain.fm is very structured and obeys strict rules. There are some genres I can't get right yet - rock, folk, and so on. Although I'm always happy when people like it, and I like to think I did a good job giving the AI decent taste, I definitely don't have any illusions about this replacing humans :) Did you take a listen to the Focus categories? Most of those are 120bpm. (skip around till you hit the classical one - I fed the AI harpsichord concertos I grew up with. Cool example of how maybe this could help some composers!) Got a link to your stuff? Love to hear it. - Adam (oh and also there is definitely more than ambient music even in the relaxation sessions. Give it another listen if you have a moment. Skip around. There's indian music, mongolian chants, and the nature sounds are also all AI-generated. Every gust of wind, every raindrop :)
- nitrogen 11y ago
  Since you mentioned "the smallest pop", I thought you might be interested to know that the volume slider causes discontinuity pops, at least on Firefox, and could benefit from some smoothing. Very nice music on the site!
  - ahewett 11y ago
    Ahh! Damnit! I did not know that, sorry. Audio playback is remarkably inconsistent between browsers, or even between the same browser versions in different environments. It's a big headache. Glad you dig the music :)
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- ryan-allen 11y ago
  I guess you can't talk much about the AI as it's proprietary? It sounds pretty interesting though. What harpsichord concertos did you feed it? Is every session that is created unique? So you are not listening to the same thing each time?
  - ahewett 11y ago
    It is proprietary I guess, but I don't really mind talking about it :) I did a talk recently at Northwestern (The Garage) and they were interested, so I spilled the beans. I'd like to get that talk up actually. I used the Bach's harpsichord concertos - Allegro/Presto/etc, since we're doing focus in that case. It's actually the 2nd most popular theme on the site! I made that one for myself to be honest - I grew up with those things and it was a labor of love, that one. Took some major reconfiguring, but it was worth it I think. You're definitely not listening to the same thing each time. There's a huge variety. It doesn't generate the sessions in real-time (audio processing of this kind is very, very CPU intensive), but we take the data we get and process it for later use. At this point there's so many sessions "cached" that you get huge variety right off the bat and we're building up an infrastructure to create more sessions faster I'll be adding more "themes" later. To explain, in some cases there are sessions that use a specific protocol, like the harpsichord one. That's static. But other themes are more flexible, and so different protocols can be used for the same theme. By protocol I mean what we're actually trying to stimulate in the brain.

by jkxyz 11y ago

mtdewcmu 11y ago

It's putting me to sleep, even though I'm listening through speakers and not headphones.

shardo 11y ago
Perhaps it's just your mind getting easily tired from having to focus for large periods of time?
ahewett 11y ago
Which category were you listening to? It's definitely a whole different experience with headphones :)
- mtdewcmu 11y ago
  I picked something sleepy.
  - ahewett 11y ago
    Ah, well, glad it worked then :)

ahewett 11y ago

Hey, this Adam from Brain.fm. I created the music "AI" thing. Glad to have the praise of a musician! My family's very musical, so it took some convincing for them as well. The thing is, it still takes creativity! It took me half a year to create it, and there's a little piece of my soul in this AI. A horcrux, programmed in. :) It makes music how I would make music. Well, most of the time. I had to create the thing because it was taking me a month to create a single session manually, and much of what I had to do was so precise that an algorithm could do it easier. Every note, every beat, has to be perfectly synchronized with the other filters we're applying to the music. So I built some algorithms, but they piled up, had to be constantly re-calibrated based on additions to the music as I kept composing. Keep in mind these are half hour to hour long pieces! And there's no shortcuts - I can't just throw a bunch of music in there, because even the smallest pop/overclip/dissonant moment, could wake someone up, or break their concentration... It just got to a point where something with more working memory than me had to take over. The music in Brain.fm is very structured and obeys strict rules. There are some genres I can't get right yet - rock, folk, and so on. Although I'm always happy when people like it, and I like to think I did a good job giving the AI decent taste, I definitely don't have any illusions about this replacing humans :) Did you take a listen to the Focus categories? Most of those are 120bpm. (skip around till you hit the classical one - I fed the AI harpsichord concertos I grew up with. Cool example of how maybe this could help some composers!) Got a link to your stuff? Love to hear it. - Adam (oh and also there is definitely more than ambient music even in the relaxation sessions. Give it another listen if you have a moment. Skip around. There's indian music, mongolian chants, and the nature sounds are also all AI-generated. Every gust of wind, every raindrop :)

nitrogen 11y ago
Since you mentioned "the smallest pop", I thought you might be interested to know that the volume slider causes discontinuity pops, at least on Firefox, and could benefit from some smoothing. Very nice music on the site!
- ahewett 11y ago
  Ahh! Damnit! I did not know that, sorry. Audio playback is remarkably inconsistent between browsers, or even between the same browser versions in different environments. It's a big headache. Glad you dig the music :)
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
ryan-allen 11y ago
I guess you can't talk much about the AI as it's proprietary? It sounds pretty interesting though. What harpsichord concertos did you feed it? Is every session that is created unique? So you are not listening to the same thing each time?
- ahewett 11y ago
  It is proprietary I guess, but I don't really mind talking about it :) I did a talk recently at Northwestern (The Garage) and they were interested, so I spilled the beans. I'd like to get that talk up actually. I used the Bach's harpsichord concertos - Allegro/Presto/etc, since we're doing focus in that case. It's actually the 2nd most popular theme on the site! I made that one for myself to be honest - I grew up with those things and it was a labor of love, that one. Took some major reconfiguring, but it was worth it I think. You're definitely not listening to the same thing each time. There's a huge variety. It doesn't generate the sessions in real-time (audio processing of this kind is very, very CPU intensive), but we take the data we get and process it for later use. At this point there's so many sessions "cached" that you get huge variety right off the bat and we're building up an infrastructure to create more sessions faster I'll be adding more "themes" later. To explain, in some cases there are sessions that use a specific protocol, like the harpsichord one. That's static. But other themes are more flexible, and so different protocols can be used for the same theme. By protocol I mean what we're actually trying to stimulate in the brain.