5 ms·

Completing Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony

48 points by ohjeez 5y ago

josefx 5y ago
> I see AI not as a replacement, but as a tool – one that opens doors for artists to express themselves in new ways. New ways? Aren't current AI extremely conservative? For example github copilot which simply copy pastes decades old code encoded in its model to complete a text.
- tgv 5y ago
  Precisely. I'm not interested how to make some theme sound like his previous works, but how he would have created something new. Of course, he might have failed there.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    I don't think that's fundamentally possible. We just don't have enough information about his creation process to know that.
    - mdp2021 5y ago
      The idea would be to backward engineer such "creation process" to the extent given by tools and abilities. Unfortunately, the enemy to be avoided, "pale imitation", lurks. It depends on the level one manages to reach: in a context of speech, for example (attempting to give the idea), copying the wisdom > copying the semantics > copying the syntax > copying the words. There are foundations grounding what they support, so just identifying patterns (e.g. of words) without creating their "understanding" misses the core. Generating the latter (words, syntax) without having reached the former (wisdom, semantics) will mean obtaining "rambling" which may suggest the style of some author - it would be creating an idiot impersonating some real figure, an "impersonating idiot" like any fool attempting to disguise as Churchill (or whoever). In theory, elements of the «creation process» could be entailed. In practice, that must be a goal, and it presumably requires a much higher understanding of those methods to be feasible.
      - tgv 5y ago
        It totally would, and it would also require an insight into how (in this case) Beethoven found new ways of expression, even though he already could draw on so many. In other words, it would require strong AI, and then particular knowledge about Beethoven's thought processes, in detail.
        mdp2021 5y ago
        Yes, but even sticking with a selected amount of material - not in the direction of "simulating the full Beethoven person", but in that of "obtaining knowledge [as if tentative scientific laws - informational compression from observation to underlying structures which can be exported and productively reapplied] to be squeezed out of some material", there is a dramatic difference between identifying "apparent superficial patterns" and identifying "the foundations of such patterns". Those "laws" are meant to be "the structures of reality", not the "structures of phenomena": similarly for understanding, which is not "how this behaves" but (like in science) "why this behaves", using "how" (the observation) to deduce "why". Any rambling may superficially make sense - and to get that superficial patterns are enough -, while underlying understanding (as a broad and powerful category) is required to actually build sense. To continue the example, one could impersonate Churchill by appropriating the terms and mannerism, or by deducing his ideas - "think like Churchill" is not "sound like Churchill". The idea of "intelligence" is that "intus legere", which explicitly excludes reading the surface where there is no "into". Otherwise, identifying superficial patterns is "Artificial Skimming", AS. It is far from impossible to deduce deep thought structures from limited material, but it must be the explicit goal.
ajkjk 5y ago
I wish it was clear how much of the work was supposedly done by an AI. The skeptic in me thinks.. not much.
jancsika 5y ago
How in the world did they not take sketches for the ninth symphony and listen to what the AI output?!? Are AI researchers competing with blockchain for the Happy Talk of the Century Award or something? Christ, it's like reading a blog that speculates about the content of an unused scratch ticket. [Edited to improve the name of the award]
- _ZeD_ 5y ago
  because then you'll have to cope with the results
  - jancsika 5y ago
    Personally, I'd be interested enough to listen to the whole AI-generated output no matter what the quality. I guess that means I'm much more interested in honestly assessing the quality of the output. (Hell, not even critiquing as much as just listening to it at all.) There were some big names in the musical world working on this. The fact that apparently none of them pushed to get output from the ML algo for extant Beethoven pieces is mildly disturbing. Luckily, classical music is largely ineffectual-- I mean, there's no pollution or dead passengers as a by-product of its corruption. So if anyone in adtech is reading this-- switch to a career in music today and sleep well, knowing that the exploitation of your glaring myopia by snake-oil salesman won't cause you to unwittingly contribute to destroying democracy.
coolandsmartrr 5y ago
Since Beethoven, it's considered bad omen to complete a 10th symphony in classical music. The productive Gustav Mahler circumvented this by naming one of his symphonies as "The Song of the Earth".
- ziotom78 5y ago
  However, Shostakovich managed to complete 15 symphonies [1] (and many of these are awesome!). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Shostakovich https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Shostakovich
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Which one do you recommend?
    - ziotom78 5y ago
      The ones I love the most are the First [1] (written when he was a student!…), the Fifth [2], the Seventh [3], and the Thirteenth [4]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPQMdtAOXVw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPQMdtAOXVw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPDqyJF3C4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPDqyJF3C4 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB3zR_X25UU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB3zR_X25UU [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOmfNobfeqw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOmfNobfeqw
  - coolandsmartrr 5y ago
    Shostakovitch is an outlier. His 9th symphony departs from the established precedent of composing seriously for this otherwise iconic number. It's a comical satire on the Soviet state then, an embarrassment to Stalin who commissioned the piece in commemoration of victory in WW2. For more commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCxzMYVvHBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCxzMYVvHBg
jboggan 5y ago
I have no doubt this will fool a great many people. If you've ever served in a symphony orchestra and played one of his majestic symphonies I doubt it will move you.
wackro 5y ago
This was discussed yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28696257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28696257
- mdp2021 5y ago
  That of yesterday (Smithsonian) was a republishing, this is the original (TheConversation). One could have thought this was further information: it is the exact copy.
dheera 5y ago
I'm not a professional musician but I'm classically trained in piano and violin. I listened to the "selection" at the bottom and it really makes absolutely no musical sense at all. The phrasing is off, it seems like someone just regurgitated phrases from several different pieces and put them together. It does not carry a coherent theme, and very abruptly switches styles several times with no good transitions at all, and transitions was something Beethoven was truly a master at. And at 1:30 WTF in the hell was that?
- mstade 5y ago
  I couldn't play an instrument if my life depended on it, can't sing particularly well and also have little to no musical training beyond whatever we did in middle school – even I can tell this piece just doesn't sound right. Listening to it felt schizophrenic or something, like it's reaching all over the place and just going off on weird incoherent tangents. Almost exhausting to try and keep up with it, and not in a good way.
daniel-thompson 5y ago
It sounds like a machine jumbled up the structural elements of his other symphonies and spit pieces of them out. I hear the famous four-note leitmotif from the 5th symphony's 1st movement; there are the triplet rhythms and timpani from the 9th symphony's 2nd movement; there are the textures from the 3rd symphony's 1st movement. Not sure what's going on with the brass starting at 1:30 (maybe that's a separate section stitched together for the sample?) As an intellectual exercise it's interesting enough, I guess, but I don't hear any inspiration here.

48 points by ohjeez 5y ago

> I see AI not as a replacement, but as a tool – one that opens doors for artists to express themselves in new ways. New ways? Aren't current AI extremely conservative? For example github copilot which simply copy pastes decades old code encoded in its model to complete a text.

tgv 5y ago
Precisely. I'm not interested how to make some theme sound like his previous works, but how he would have created something new. Of course, he might have failed there.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  I don't think that's fundamentally possible. We just don't have enough information about his creation process to know that.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    The idea would be to backward engineer such "creation process" to the extent given by tools and abilities. Unfortunately, the enemy to be avoided, "pale imitation", lurks. It depends on the level one manages to reach: in a context of speech, for example (attempting to give the idea), copying the wisdom > copying the semantics > copying the syntax > copying the words. There are foundations grounding what they support, so just identifying patterns (e.g. of words) without creating their "understanding" misses the core. Generating the latter (words, syntax) without having reached the former (wisdom, semantics) will mean obtaining "rambling" which may suggest the style of some author - it would be creating an idiot impersonating some real figure, an "impersonating idiot" like any fool attempting to disguise as Churchill (or whoever). In theory, elements of the «creation process» could be entailed. In practice, that must be a goal, and it presumably requires a much higher understanding of those methods to be feasible.
    - tgv 5y ago
      It totally would, and it would also require an insight into how (in this case) Beethoven found new ways of expression, even though he already could draw on so many. In other words, it would require strong AI, and then particular knowledge about Beethoven's thought processes, in detail.
      - mdp2021 5y ago
        Yes, but even sticking with a selected amount of material - not in the direction of "simulating the full Beethoven person", but in that of "obtaining knowledge [as if tentative scientific laws - informational compression from observation to underlying structures which can be exported and productively reapplied] to be squeezed out of some material", there is a dramatic difference between identifying "apparent superficial patterns" and identifying "the foundations of such patterns". Those "laws" are meant to be "the structures of reality", not the "structures of phenomena": similarly for understanding, which is not "how this behaves" but (like in science) "why this behaves", using "how" (the observation) to deduce "why". Any rambling may superficially make sense - and to get that superficial patterns are enough -, while underlying understanding (as a broad and powerful category) is required to actually build sense. To continue the example, one could impersonate Churchill by appropriating the terms and mannerism, or by deducing his ideas - "think like Churchill" is not "sound like Churchill". The idea of "intelligence" is that "intus legere", which explicitly excludes reading the surface where there is no "into". Otherwise, identifying superficial patterns is "Artificial Skimming", AS. It is far from impossible to deduce deep thought structures from limited material, but it must be the explicit goal.

ajkjk 5y ago

I wish it was clear how much of the work was supposedly done by an AI. The skeptic in me thinks.. not much.

jancsika 5y ago

How in the world did they not take sketches for the ninth symphony and listen to what the AI output?!? Are AI researchers competing with blockchain for the Happy Talk of the Century Award or something? Christ, it's like reading a blog that speculates about the content of an unused scratch ticket. [Edited to improve the name of the award]

_ZeD_ 5y ago
because then you'll have to cope with the results
- jancsika 5y ago
  Personally, I'd be interested enough to listen to the whole AI-generated output no matter what the quality. I guess that means I'm much more interested in honestly assessing the quality of the output. (Hell, not even critiquing as much as just listening to it at all.) There were some big names in the musical world working on this. The fact that apparently none of them pushed to get output from the ML algo for extant Beethoven pieces is mildly disturbing. Luckily, classical music is largely ineffectual-- I mean, there's no pollution or dead passengers as a by-product of its corruption. So if anyone in adtech is reading this-- switch to a career in music today and sleep well, knowing that the exploitation of your glaring myopia by snake-oil salesman won't cause you to unwittingly contribute to destroying democracy.

coolandsmartrr 5y ago

Since Beethoven, it's considered bad omen to complete a 10th symphony in classical music. The productive Gustav Mahler circumvented this by naming one of his symphonies as "The Song of the Earth".

ziotom78 5y ago
However, Shostakovich managed to complete 15 symphonies [1] (and many of these are awesome!). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Shostakovich https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Shostakovich
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  Which one do you recommend?
  - ziotom78 5y ago
    The ones I love the most are the First [1] (written when he was a student!…), the Fifth [2], the Seventh [3], and the Thirteenth [4]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPQMdtAOXVw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPQMdtAOXVw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPDqyJF3C4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPDqyJF3C4 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB3zR_X25UU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB3zR_X25UU [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOmfNobfeqw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOmfNobfeqw
- coolandsmartrr 5y ago
  Shostakovitch is an outlier. His 9th symphony departs from the established precedent of composing seriously for this otherwise iconic number. It's a comical satire on the Soviet state then, an embarrassment to Stalin who commissioned the piece in commemoration of victory in WW2. For more commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCxzMYVvHBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCxzMYVvHBg

jboggan 5y ago

I have no doubt this will fool a great many people. If you've ever served in a symphony orchestra and played one of his majestic symphonies I doubt it will move you.

wackro 5y ago

This was discussed yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28696257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28696257

mdp2021 5y ago
That of yesterday (Smithsonian) was a republishing, this is the original (TheConversation). One could have thought this was further information: it is the exact copy.

dheera 5y ago

I'm not a professional musician but I'm classically trained in piano and violin. I listened to the "selection" at the bottom and it really makes absolutely no musical sense at all. The phrasing is off, it seems like someone just regurgitated phrases from several different pieces and put them together. It does not carry a coherent theme, and very abruptly switches styles several times with no good transitions at all, and transitions was something Beethoven was truly a master at. And at 1:30 WTF in the hell was that?

mstade 5y ago
I couldn't play an instrument if my life depended on it, can't sing particularly well and also have little to no musical training beyond whatever we did in middle school – even I can tell this piece just doesn't sound right. Listening to it felt schizophrenic or something, like it's reaching all over the place and just going off on weird incoherent tangents. Almost exhausting to try and keep up with it, and not in a good way.

daniel-thompson 5y ago

It sounds like a machine jumbled up the structural elements of his other symphonies and spit pieces of them out. I hear the famous four-note leitmotif from the 5th symphony's 1st movement; there are the triplet rhythms and timpani from the 9th symphony's 2nd movement; there are the textures from the 3rd symphony's 1st movement. Not sure what's going on with the brass starting at 1:30 (maybe that's a separate section stitched together for the sample?) As an intellectual exercise it's interesting enough, I guess, but I don't hear any inspiration here.