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A Computer Composing and Playing Jazz
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Nov 23, 2008 05:40 PM
from the jazz?-you-really-are-polite dept.
from the jazz?-you-really-are-polite dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has some unusual teaching programs. One PhD student, Øyvind Brandtsegg, is a graduate of the jazz program and this article describes how has developed a computer program and a musical instrument for improvisation. The PhD student is 36 years old and is at the same time a composer, a musician and computer programmer. His 'computer instrument' can take any recorded sound as input and split it into a number of very short sound particles that can last for between 1 and 10 milliseconds. 'These fragments may be infinitely reshuffled, making it possible to vary the music with no change in the fundamental theme.'" Brandtsegg improvisational software is called ImproSculpt; his site contains several selections from his musical output, including "some pieces made with the predecessor of ImproSculpt," called FollowMe.
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1ms? (Score:2, Insightful)
That is a very short chunk of 'music'!
Obligatory futurama reference (Score:5, Funny)
Without machines, who will feed us and clothe us and compose our smooth jazz?
some other research in this vein (Score:4, Informative)
There's been a small amount of previous research in jazz solo composition, including a real-time solo-trading system that learns solo styles from data. Here's one paper [cmu.edu] describing the system that seems to have made the most progress.
sounds like granular synthesis (Score:2)
"a number of very short sound particles that can last for between 1 and 10 milliseconds" sounds like granular synthesis. seems like a algorithmic composition (pitch, rythm, duration, etc.) driving a synth; and that the two data sets are unrelated
granular synthesis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granular_synthesis [wikipedia.org]
mr c
Jazz turing test (Score:5, Interesting)
Have a human jazz band playing and let a computer or a human do the solos. The jury should not be able to distinguish between them.
Copyright? (Score:3, Interesting)
If music is composed purely mechanically, i.e. via an algorithm, it seems like it would not enjoy copyright protection.
This might limit its adoption by the music industry, except as a way to generate ideas. Of course, if a musician uses this as a tool then adds his own creative flair, you have a copyrightable work.
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If music is composed purely mechanically, i.e. via an algorithm, it seems like it would not enjoy copyright protection.
This could create a problem for the Top 40.
Raymond Scott already did it! (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Raymond Scott was an electronic music genius, but he was criticized for shunning the improvisational aspects of Jazz. The world of electronic synthesis has improved dramatically due to Scott's work, but it turns out that the improvisational aspect is the hardest part to simulate.
I wrote my masters thesis on AI that attempts to improvise (Sorry, I'd post a link, but my server would shut down immediately if both of you that cared were to download it at once. Email at lkeagleATgmail if interested). I used a
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Al Biles [rit.edu] is at the Rochester Institute of Technology, not University of Rochester.
Sounds nightmarish (Score:2)
I thought jazz musicians had something to worry about, but damn if it doesn't sound horrible...
http://oeyvind.teks.no/pre_mercurysiren.mp3 [oeyvind.teks.no]
The concept is great however. I've no doubt we're moving towards computer generated music, but still a-ways to go...
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Oh, we've got some great computer-generated music. Check out Brian Eno's ambient recordings (or the background music in Spore, designed by Eno). But its application, so far, is very limited.
As Wendy Carlos would say (Score:2)
"Random music is randomly boring"
Well (Score:2)
I live in his hometown.
Re: (Score:2)
My opinion may be slanted but it won't sound as good as John Coltrane.
It'll probably sound better than his acid albums. Ain't gonna touch A Love Supreme, though.
Chunk Munger (Score:2)
And sloooooooow.
Jazz is Floating Counterpoint (Score:2)
Jazz is not random. Jazz is not improv. Jazz is floating counterpoint. This is a specific thing, built on top of well established music theory.
Saying it is random is like looking at the byte values that make up a JPEG of the Grand Canyon and saying "I just don't see it. It's just random numbers".
I'll never understand the tendency of slashdotters (not you, of course, I'm talking about those other guys) to assume anything they don't understand is beneath them.
Re:Jazz is Floating Counterpoint (Score:5, Informative)
Read what you just wrote then slap yourself for me. You should have just stopped at "Jazz is". "Improv" appears 19 times in the 37 paragraphs about Jazz on Wikipedia. Counterpoint appears zero times.
Parent
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And Wikipedia is always right? Heh. I tend to agree with the previous poster. And what's more, I'm relatively sure Miles Davis would, as would Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong.
Improvisation does support jazz, specifically in live settings. But Jazz definitely is *not* improv. Ask Donald Fagen what he thinks of Improvisation. Hell, it's a slightly different genre, but ask Prince and James Brown what they think of it while you're at it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You have a point insofar as "jazz is not random." But there are a few problems here:
1) Your statement seems to indicate that you think "random" and "improv" are one side of a coin. Improv is not random.
2) Counterpoint is a specific type of polyphonic technique. Jazz can be contrapuntal, but it doesn't have to be. In fact, it doesn't even have to be polyphonic.
3) The cutting edge of jazz is not built on top of well-established music theory. Theory follows practice, not the other way around. Yeah, if you want
Expect more of this in the future (Score:2)
If computers get better at composing music (and they will), we should eventually see websites that stream newly composed music 24/7.
Instead of selling songs you sell composition.
and all that jazz (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know if there's a ghost in this machine but it certainly plays with more soul than Kenny G.
Interesting (Score:2)
Hmm, this is, um, ... interesting ... um ... I listened to the first one I found, which sounded a bit like a donkey being sawn in half, apparently recorded in a gannetry. So this is jazz, is it? I'll have to find some of my Loius Armstrong et al. I sincerely hope this was computer generated, I don't think a human voice should sound like that; I'm pretty sure Ella Fitzgerals didn't sing that way, but it's been a while, of course, and people change, don't they? You've got to keep an open mind.
At least it isn'
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, obviously the tech is already widely available, but a clever application of it that creates beautiful music (if it in fact does) is still awesome.
I mean, not every cool invention is going to be super groundbreaking, like the lightbulb. Some are just going to be good adaptations of existing tech, like lamps and lampshades.
Parent
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
And some are truly revolutionary, like the Clapper.
Parent
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Are you shure you didn't get zem in ze Dutch East Indies, on shore leave?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well according to TFA it doesn't, it plays jazz instead.
Re: Lead (in Paint) & Peanut Butter (Score:2)
I was actually making that joke back in chem.
Lead's symbol is Pb. We started wondering about Peanut Butter Carbonate, etc.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, that's called granular synthesis [wikipedia.org], and it's been around for awhile. There are a number of free and inexpensive grain cloud generators available...I wrote one myself, actually (http://atomiccloud.gersic.com/ [gersic.com]).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
For anyone out there wanting to generate their own grain cloud, try 2 cups of cornflour in a blender with the lid off.
Kurzweil told us... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:free form? (Score:4, Interesting)
It may sound random, but one of the things that allegedly makes jazz interesting is the reaction to other players. If another player does something interesting, then you react to it and mirror it in your own way. It's sort of "orchestral swarm theory". I can't say this is true of all players, however.
Parent
Re:free form? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In the very least, if done correctly, free jazz would be one of the hardest music for a computer to do, because it requires the complete attention of the whole band. When you throw the rules away, you REALLY have to listen to the music and
Re: (Score:2)
Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz
In a Silent Way might be more approachable. You can hear Zawinul 'announce' a new change on the organ and then several measures later everybody descends on it simultaneously. That never gets old.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
In a Silent Way might be more approachable.
So would be "Kind of Blue" but I wouldn't call either "free".
Re:free form? (Score:4, Interesting)
Free jazz has been said to be Charles Mingus' invention, but he once said "If only those free jazz cats could play the same tunes twice... " To cut a long story short, while I'm an avid jazz fan, free jazz is really an abomination in the eye of the Lord. I can listen to anything from bebop to classic jazz to the tinkering Steely Dan did with the genre, but at the end of the day if the cats can't play the same tune twice I'm out of there.
Then again, I'm an Oscar Peterson fan. That about says it all. I don't want "infinite variations", I want a certain groove and swing to my music, however dissonant and angry it may be. So I reserve the right to take Fred Wesley's work over a particle synthesizer any day of the week.
One of the beautiful things about music, be it Miles Davis and John Coltrane working with the Miles Davis Quintet, The Notwist's electronic work, Tom Waits' most loony tunes or Mozart's most frivolous concertos, is that it's the product of a human mind expressing its particular brand of madness.
You take the mind/soul out of the equation and you'll see me turn my ticket in by the door as I leave the venue.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You take the mind/soul out of the equation and you'll see me turn my ticket in by the door as I leave the venue.
Are you saying a human didn't program the machine?
The same could be said about musical notation and people who play on electronic instruments. Its only one step of separation.
As many of a programmer and hardware engineer can attest... Sometimes code and technology is art in itself.
Re: (Score:2)
AFAIK, something similar (but probably repeating, at one point) is possible to do with fractals. I heard a modernist composer talk about a fractal producing a Romantic orchestral work but for two notes.
Come to think of it, I've heard actual computer generated compositions that sounded exactly as if they were composed by Mozart.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, 'informative'. Because when it comes to art, Slashdotters are as arrogant as they are ignorant.
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Jazz is improvisation. That right there spans a ridiculously wide amount of jazz genres. Free form jazz is the most extreme form, and personally the most irritating.
However some great jazz may sound like "random" notes, and in a way, it is random, but there's a ridiculous amount of thought behind how to get to those "random" notes.
They say about jazz "The better it is, the less people will really understand it".
Re: (Score:2)
Your first statement isn't true at all. You even negate it in your second statement. A lot of thought went into the randomness some people perceive.
Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue", Dave Brubeck's "Time Out", Chet Baker's "It could happen to you", Thelonious Monk's "Monk's dream" and Louis & Ella's "Ella & Louis" are very, very far from improvisation, as is Oscar Peterson & Milt Jackson's "Very Tall".
Those are some of the greatest jazz records in history. While improvisation can definitely play a rol
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you had studied music only briefly in college, you would know that the tradition working with "randomness" (i.e. the unintended) comes from John Cage and contemporary classical music, not from jazz. And it does sound totally different. That's one point of supporting evidence for you, re ignorance.
Of course there is a lot of jazz that just isn't any good, played by poor musicians who don't know what they're doing, but it's no more an aspect of the genre than it is for pop or rock: most people aren't good
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As George Carlin put it, it's not enough to play the right notes. You have to know why they have to be played.
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Not to mention that granular synthesis dates back to at least the 70's*, and has already had time to go from "cool" to "that's what was popular 10 years ago".
While it's always cool to write new audio effects software, there are plenty of systems that can achieve the effect described in the summary today. No idea why this is on the front page.
*Roads, C., 1978. "Automated granular synthesis of sound." Computer Music Journal 2(2): 61-62.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, yes, the obligatory Simpsons quote.
Thing is, anyone "faking" jazz is immediately noticeable to anyone who is even slightly educated in the genre.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)