@ Stephen Jablonsky<br><br>Your question: "Why would anyone want a computer to write music?"<br>A possible answer: "Because it is there" (a stock answer in mountaineering to the perennial question "Why would anyone want to climb the Mt. Everest?")<br>
<br>Artists use tools and technques that a) excite them aesthetically, b) serve their artistic purpose...<br>Computer music is a huge intellectual and artistic challenge - and, as Eliot has rightly remarked, it is a kind of modern-day cathedral, a multi-generational artistic enterprise...<br>
if nothing else, this justifies looking at computer-generated music making...<br><br>
Would it be not a worthwhile task for a musicologist to go into that
terrain and sniff out the highly talented virtuosos and "geniuses" there
?<br>
After all, it is not reasonable to assume that a musical genius growing
up in a culture that ubiquitously uses such a tool would wilfully NOT
use it to make music...<br>
Music history shows a rather different perspective - most great
composers have made use of state-of-the-art technology of their time.<br><br>I think that a churlish and grumpy approach to any kind of art-making technology defeats its purpose. <br>Imagine the following statements through the ages<br>
<ul><li><i>why use notation - my memory is much better than a piece of stupid paper...</i></li><li><i>why use polyphony - most singers can barely sing in tune properly...</i></li><li><i>why use an orchestra - an organ is louder and the musicianship is usually less watered down...and it is so much cheaper to have just one organ player instead of 20-100 hungry musician-servants</i></li>
<li><i>why write music for saxophone - there already is so much mediocre woodwind music out there...</i></li><li><i>why use chance in composition - is that not a cop-out...</i></li></ul>If composers had followed such trains of thought, a lot of the Western Canon would not exist....<br>
Thankfully, some composers just felt impelled to do something because "it was there", even if it much of their work seemed boring or unripe in retrospect. <br>I am grateful to all the experimental musicians through the ages who tried out things and failed - and so in a very real sense became the humus for the great breakthroughs and astonishing musical masterpieces western music has seen in the past 1000 years. We need to explore in order to inhabit...<br>
<br>I totally agree, however, with you with respect to the well-crafted but boring music we hear so much: there is too much of that around.<br>New tools do not make good music. But good music does not care whether the tools it was made with are new or old....<br>
Those composers who use the computer only to carry the water for them probably are the same that would otherwise write exactly such well-made, boring music.<br>The only solution: Make music theory classes optional for composers....and never allow composers to write PhD theses about their own work.<br>
<br>Best<br>Sandeep Bhagwati<br>Composer<br>Canada Research Chair for Inter-X Art<br>Director <a href="http://matralab.hexagram.ca">matralab</a><br>Concordia University Montréal<br><br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
2011/4/13 Stephen Jablonsky <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jablonsky@optimum.net">jablonsky@optimum.net</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div style="word-wrap: break-word;">All this talk about computer generated music begs the question, "Why would anyone want a computer to write music?" The answer is because composing is such a n arduous task that we want someone else to do it for us, which kind of reminds me of Mickey having the broom carry the water for him. The results are about the same.<div>
<br></div><div>When a computer programmer comes up with an algorithm for musical taste we may expect something of value to result from these efforts. Until then we'll get more of the same, just more sophisticated. There is already enough well-crafted boring music composed by highly trained, moderately talented people.<br>
<div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br><div><div>On Apr 12, 2011, at 10:37 AM, Eliot Handelman wrote:</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><br>Passing the Turning Test suggests an already finished and polished<br>
musical AI. The problem is that computer composition is in its infancy<br>and it's probably unfair to demand that 1st & 2nd generation programs<br>perform at the level of established masters. The question is how to<br>
recognize an intermediate result that is perhaps not yet great music,<br>but which suggests esthetic attitudes and theoretical stances that can<br>be developed.<br><br>For example, there's a huge problem in generating plastic and<br>
differentiated forms without following built-in patterns or<br>established formulas and without noodling. The test of a system/theory<br>meant to do this is whether it succeeds in generating a diversity of<br>such forms. If it does then there is perhaps something to the<br>
underlying theory. That takes one step that can be built upon.<br><br>How long should it take to develop musical AI? 2-3 months using<br>machine-learning? Or rather, maybe, 50 years of concentrated research<br>in which new styles of computational musicology unfold? If there's<br>
only "success" and not "progress" then we haven't a chance. This is<br>not a one-man or one generation job.<br><br>-- eliot<br><br>---<br>Eliot Handelman, PhD<br>CIRMMT<br><a href="http://www.computingmusic.com" target="_blank">www.computingmusic.com</a><br>
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<div>Prof. Stephen Jablonsky, Ph.D.</div><div>Music Department Chair</div><div>The City College of New York</div><div>160 Convent Avenue S-72</div><div>New York NY 10031</div><div>(212) 650-7663</div></div></span></span><br>
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