[Smt-talk] Aesthetics of Computer-Generated Music

[Martin Braun]

Dmitri Tymoczko wrote:

"It seems to me that it would be very easy to find pairs of pieces, one 
computer-generated and one human composed, where untrained listeners show a 
strong if not overwhelming preference for the computer-generated piece.  Not 
sure what if anything to take form that ..."

I would feel fairly sure to take two things from that:

1) The rules that are needed for the composition of pleasant and not boring 
music are so simple that machines can easily learn them.

2) The kingdom of unpleasant and boring music that was produced by human 
composers is so big that it is easy to find losers against machine made 
music.

Martin

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Martin Braun
Neuroscience of Music
S-671 95 Klässbol
Sweden
email: nombraun at telia.com
web site: http://www.neuroscience-of-music.se/index.htm




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dmitri Tymoczko" <dmitri at princeton.edu>
To: <smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 10, 2011 7:04 PM
Subject: Re: [Smt-talk] Aesthetics of Computer-Generated Music


For the last five years or so, I've subjected my intro music-theory classes 
to a musical Turing Test: I play the first movement of David Cope's Concerto 
(from Virtual Bach) and ask them to name the composer.  Nobody has ever said 
“a computer,” and they’re always pretty surprised when I tell them how the 
piece was created.  Total number of students probably about 350.

It seems to me that it would be very easy to find pairs of pieces, one 
computer-generated and one human composed, where untrained listeners show a 
strong if not overwhelming preference for the computer-generated piece.  Not 
sure what if anything to take form that ...

DT

Dmitri Tymoczko
Associate Professor of Music
310 Woolworth Center
Princeton, NJ 08544-1007
(609) 258-4255 (ph), (609) 258-6793 (fax)
http://dmitri.tymoczko.com