5 ms·

Sorry. Not impressed.

by SubiculumCode 11y ago

ludamad 11y ago
Can you elaborate? It seemed like reasonable music from a first listen
- kaonashi 11y ago
  It seems like it's just kind of randomly playing chords inversions & lines without any real voice leading or melodic sense.
  - golemotron 11y ago
    It learned from Pat Metheny.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      No, it didn't. It failed to produce competent pastiche of any of the small or large scale structures in the original track. Some of the medium scale structures are almost passable, but not with any reliability or consistency. So it does the usual expert system/AI thing of cycling between "Almost music" and "And... lost the plot" over and over.
    - kafkaesq 11y ago
      It didn't learn from Pat Metheny. It "learned" (curve-fit rather) from a MIDI file or two, apparently. If it learned from a real musician, one of the first things it would have been taught is how to listen to other musician's music. And then, how to listen to itself. And then, how to play a much simpler piece, than then play it right, so it sounds like music... not like someone typing (which is what the SoundCloud samples sound like, to my ears). But of course machines don't "listen" in any meaningful sense. And they certainly can't tell what it is they like about Pat Metheny's music; or why they "like" his music, but not the music of Billy Joel or Anthony Braxton. So maybe that's where these researchers should start -- by creating systems that (at least attempt to) understand and evaluate music. And to tell good from bad. Then, maybe, they can toy around with systems that generate music.
  - StevePerkins 11y ago
    Have you listened to any jazz from 1980 onward? Haha... it pretty much all sounds like this! (and yet is still more human-sounding than the atonalism that dominates modern orchestra works)
    - kaonashi 11y ago
      Yea, a lot of people tried to sound like Ornette back then and couldn't quite pull it off.
- kafkaesq 11y ago
  Hard to put my finger on it. Robotic, soulless? Like pretty much exactly what you'd expect coming from an an entity or a thing that thinks music is just about notes and mathematical patterns... and not about emotions, or an experience that you feel in your body. On a less handy-wavy level, I suspect there are issues of tone and timing embedded in human-generated musical expression that these algorithms don't begin to capture. In the same way that - no matter how much they keep tweaking their markov chains and phoneme scales -- we can always tell that a machine-generated voice sounds "off" somehow, literally within tens of milliseconds. As the saying goes: it don't mean thing if it ain't got that je n'sais quoi.
dmansen 11y ago
lol wow
kafkaesq 11y ago
People need to stop knee-jerkedly downvoting stuff. The above comment might not sound very civil or friendly in response to posting about an AI project -- but it's a perfectly reasonable gut-level reaction to have to an (alleged) piece of music. Particularly this "music". And it happens to be mine, also, in regard to the SoundCloud samples. Sure, the project behind it might be mathematically interesting and all... but really now, this ain't music, let alone jazz. In fact, if I came across those samples whilst flipping between radio stations, I would probably hover for at most a second or two, before giving the dial another turn... or turning the damn thing off. Absolutely unlistenable, in other words.
- JamilD 11y ago
  It may be true, but to me the parent comment came across as smug and condescending, and didn't really have anything to contribute to the conversation. Your comment, on the other hand, provided some more insight into why this might not be notable or impressive.
- devin 11y ago
  I respectfully disagree. Yes it's going to sound terrible being played by the default midi soundfont, but what it's playing is actually quite interesting.
- mrspeaker 11y ago
  No one downvoted the OP because they thought the music was good - they downvoted because the comment was garbage and didn't express any reasoning. It was a useless "-1" reply. Your comment on the other hand (aside the complaining about downvoting, which is discouraged in the HN guidelines) was fair and interesting - and I personally upvoted it.
- daemonk 11y ago
  People are down-voting it because it is exact what you said, a gut-level reaction. While it may be a perfectly reasonable reaction, I would think some elaboration on why they didn't like it would be far more informative and probably more inline with the posting style this site is trying to foster.
- 11y ago

Sorry. Not impressed.

ludamad 11y ago

Can you elaborate? It seemed like reasonable music from a first listen

kaonashi 11y ago
It seems like it's just kind of randomly playing chords inversions & lines without any real voice leading or melodic sense.
- golemotron 11y ago
  It learned from Pat Metheny.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    No, it didn't. It failed to produce competent pastiche of any of the small or large scale structures in the original track. Some of the medium scale structures are almost passable, but not with any reliability or consistency. So it does the usual expert system/AI thing of cycling between "Almost music" and "And... lost the plot" over and over.
  - kafkaesq 11y ago
    It didn't learn from Pat Metheny. It "learned" (curve-fit rather) from a MIDI file or two, apparently. If it learned from a real musician, one of the first things it would have been taught is how to listen to other musician's music. And then, how to listen to itself. And then, how to play a much simpler piece, than then play it right, so it sounds like music... not like someone typing (which is what the SoundCloud samples sound like, to my ears). But of course machines don't "listen" in any meaningful sense. And they certainly can't tell what it is they like about Pat Metheny's music; or why they "like" his music, but not the music of Billy Joel or Anthony Braxton. So maybe that's where these researchers should start -- by creating systems that (at least attempt to) understand and evaluate music. And to tell good from bad. Then, maybe, they can toy around with systems that generate music.
- StevePerkins 11y ago
  Have you listened to any jazz from 1980 onward? Haha... it pretty much all sounds like this! (and yet is still more human-sounding than the atonalism that dominates modern orchestra works)
  - kaonashi 11y ago
    Yea, a lot of people tried to sound like Ornette back then and couldn't quite pull it off.
kafkaesq 11y ago
Hard to put my finger on it. Robotic, soulless? Like pretty much exactly what you'd expect coming from an an entity or a thing that thinks music is just about notes and mathematical patterns... and not about emotions, or an experience that you feel in your body. On a less handy-wavy level, I suspect there are issues of tone and timing embedded in human-generated musical expression that these algorithms don't begin to capture. In the same way that - no matter how much they keep tweaking their markov chains and phoneme scales -- we can always tell that a machine-generated voice sounds "off" somehow, literally within tens of milliseconds. As the saying goes: it don't mean thing if it ain't got that je n'sais quoi.

dmansen 11y ago

lol wow

kafkaesq 11y ago

People need to stop knee-jerkedly downvoting stuff. The above comment might not sound very civil or friendly in response to posting about an AI project -- but it's a perfectly reasonable gut-level reaction to have to an (alleged) piece of music. Particularly this "music". And it happens to be mine, also, in regard to the SoundCloud samples. Sure, the project behind it might be mathematically interesting and all... but really now, this ain't music, let alone jazz. In fact, if I came across those samples whilst flipping between radio stations, I would probably hover for at most a second or two, before giving the dial another turn... or turning the damn thing off. Absolutely unlistenable, in other words.

JamilD 11y ago
It may be true, but to me the parent comment came across as smug and condescending, and didn't really have anything to contribute to the conversation. Your comment, on the other hand, provided some more insight into why this might not be notable or impressive.
devin 11y ago
I respectfully disagree. Yes it's going to sound terrible being played by the default midi soundfont, but what it's playing is actually quite interesting.
mrspeaker 11y ago
No one downvoted the OP because they thought the music was good - they downvoted because the comment was garbage and didn't express any reasoning. It was a useless "-1" reply. Your comment on the other hand (aside the complaining about downvoting, which is discouraged in the HN guidelines) was fair and interesting - and I personally upvoted it.
daemonk 11y ago
People are down-voting it because it is exact what you said, a gut-level reaction. While it may be a perfectly reasonable reaction, I would think some elaboration on why they didn't like it would be far more informative and probably more inline with the posting style this site is trying to foster.
11y ago