When Robots Write Songs: Computers That Compose

The Atlantic
When Robots Write Songs
Bach, Coltrane, McCartney: New algorithms can produce original compositions in the style of the greats. But are those works actually art?

William Hochberg Aug 7 2014, 8:01 AM ET

When Pharrell Williams accepted five Grammy Awards this year on behalf of the French group Daft Punk, the duo were dressed as robots. This may have foreshadowed a coming invasion by real music robots from France.

Computer scientists in Paris and the U.S. are working on algorithms enabling computers to make up original fugues in the style of Bach, improvise jazz solos a la John Coltrane, or mash up the two into a hybrid never heard before.

“We are quite close now to [programming computers to] generate nice melodies in the style of pop composers such as Legrand or McCartney,” says Francois Pachet, who heads Sony’s Computer Science Lab in Paris.

The commercial applications of such efforts may include endless streams of original music in shopping malls that can respond to crying babies with soothing harmonies, as well as time-saving tools for busy composers. But the questions raised by computerized composition are more abstract—touching on the nature of music, art, emotion, and, well, humanity.

The music-bots analyze works by flesh-and-blood composers and then synthesize original output with many of the same distinguishing characteristics. “Every work of music contains a set of instructions for creating different but highly related replications of itself,” says David Cope, a computer scientist, composer, and author who began his “Experiments in Musical Intelligence” in 1981 as the result of a composer's block.

“It’s truly impressive,” says jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, commenting on a track by a jazz-bot programmed by Pachet’s team to sound like sax legend Charlie “Bird” Parker blended with French composer Pierre Boulez. “I sent it to Chris Potter, the saxophone player in the band I am touring with right now, and asked him who the player was. He immediately started guessing people.”

The French robot that mashes up Parker and Boulez is a lot more advanced than most efforts at computer-penned music. For instance, another jazz-bot emulates Bill Evans with mixed results. Known for his heavenly flights of pianistic virtuosity, often while doped up on heroin, the classically trained Evans defined Cool Jazz on Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” outing, the most popular jazz album ever. Sony’s Evans-bot sounds more like it’s doped up on a cocktail of Thorazine and Windows 8. The lush chordings and rush of arpeggios are trademark Evans, but the ham-fisted dynamics and pointless melodies reveal no one human is home.

In 1950, World War II code-breaker and forefather of artificial intelligence Alan Turing introduced a blindfold test to see whether computers could fool humans into believing they were communicating with other humans (“humans” who were actually computers). The test would determine, essentially, whether computers can “think.”

But can they swing? “I would submit that you can certainly make a computer swing,” says Brooklyn-based musician and technologist Eric Singer. “You can kind of jitter that swing a bit to make it sound more human. “

Singer helped devise a computerized band called the “Orchestrion” that Metheny recorded and toured with in lieu of live musicians in 2010. The Orchestrion (also called a Panharmonica) was reportedly invented in 1805 by musician (and, some said, swindler) Johann Nepomuk Maelzel. Beethoven, a fan of early music tech, featured Maelzel’s musical automatons—powered by a bellows—in between symphonies at concerts in 1813.

David Cope has designed EMMY, an emulator named for the acronym of Cope’s “Experiments in Musical Intelligence” project at UC Santa Cruz and elsewhere. EMMY spools out miles of convincing music: from Bach chorale to Mozart sonata to Chopin mazurka, Joplin Rag, and even a work in the style of her creator, Cope.

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Read the full article with multimedia examples HERE in the Atlantic.

LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy Wants NYC's Subway System to Make Music

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Musician James Murphy thinks New York's "underground music" scene leaves a lot to be desired. He wants to change the underlying sound: the cacophony produced by the subway turnstiles.

"They make this unpleasant beep and are all slightly out of tune from one another," said Mr. Murphy, 44 years old, over breakfast recently in the trendy Williamsburg neighborhood here.

For the past 15 years, Mr. Murphy has been crafting what he says is a low-cost musical solution: He has worked out a unique set of notes for every station, one of which would sound each time a passenger swipes his or her MetroCard to catch a train. The busier a station becomes, the richer the harmonies would be. The same notes would also play in a set sequence when the subway arrives at that stop. Each of the city's 468 subway stations would have note sets in different keys.

Now, he believes his plan finally has a chance, as the state's Metropolitan Transportation Authority embarks on a $900,000-a-year project to improve passenger flow at some stations by repositioning turnstiles, furniture and emergency exits.

Read it all and watch video of Murphy HERE in the snarky WSJ.

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Danbert Nobacon Reflects on Chumbawamba's song "Tubthumping"

Gonzo Tubthumping, Getting Knocked Down And Getting Up Again Danbert Nobacon Wednesday, February 27, 2013 BEN AFFLECK SAID while accepting his Oscar for Best Picture for Argo that: “… It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life. That’s gonna happen. All that matters is that you gotta get up.” He was talking about the resolve of artists, which we all encounter in the struggle to keep creating art. It is a testament to the spirit of human resilience in the face of sometimes overwhelming odds, which goes all the way back to our human core in the fact that homo sapiens even made it this far through the evolutionary maze. We feel it when we get the rejection letter but keep on writing or go on to do another show, or whatever it is our passion to do. We feel it in the small daily triumphs over the constraints imposed upon us by the capitalist business model. We feel it when we make the effort to go out instead of staying home. We feel it when our broken hearts begin to mend. We feel it in those moments when we transcend the pain and are fully present in the moment. We feel it when we stand up for what we believe in, and in a thousand different other ways. Chumbawamba once wrote a song called Tubthumping (and check this out for a flash mob) which unknowingly tapped into this quintessential strand of the human condition. It became a world-wide hit. It made us one-hit wonders despite us having eleven studio albums, some of which contained far better songs. It gave the eight people in the band, and still gives us, a modicum of financial security to subsist as working artists in increasingly varied fields. We got lucky, and for that and many other reasons, I still love that song. And as an artist I accept that sometimes your work rebels like a petulant teenager and goes off and has a life of its own over which you have no control. “The songs that inspire the troops on the road to Baghdad” This was a headline from the English Daily Telegraph when the invasion of Iraq was in full swing in early April 2003. The article was about DJ Jonathan Bennett, who was working for British Forces Broadcasting Services, Middle East, based in Kuwait. Because the US army had not set up their own locally based troops’ radio station, as they had done in the first Gulf War, Bennett had become a “GI’s favourite.” In addition to serving British troops, his show also reached and had a large listenership amongst US troops. Moreover, “improvements in mobile technology mean(t) that Bennett and his colleagues (were) broadcasting right to the front line.” “The guys can actually tune in while they are fighting, if they want,” Bennett was quoted as saying. The article went on, “Bennett has no doubt that the music he plays provides a vital emotional outlet for the troops. Indeed, some of the soldiers most popular requests, such as Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping (“I get knocked down, but I get up again / You never gonna keep me down”) sounded like rallying cries against not just the enemy in the desert, but the significant anti-war section of the British public.” I can only speculate, but to think a soldier may have a tune that one co-wrote running through his head as an earworm, in the moments before he kills or is killed is unsettling. That the song would be perceived as an anthem against anti-war sentiment is simply beyond. How sour the irony? It is one thing to have our taxes pay for wars we do not agree with — and this must surely be one of the most flagrantly abused shortcomings of our so-called democratic system. It is quite something else to have unwittingly provided part of the soundtrack for one of those wars as well. Whilst on reflection it did not come as a shock to us, as the authors of the song, that it would be used in this way, there was something shocking about the idea that part of ones’ art was being used to boost morale in fighting a war which we opposed with every bone in our collective political body. There are of course other cultural implications. The song had been popular for an eighteen-month period from summer 1997 into 1998. Having been an anarchist band for the previous fifteen years, inhabiting the underground or the distant fringes of the mainstream, it was in many ways a genuine, though not unpleasant, shock to us to have an international hit record. In so doing, through the mass mediums of daytime radio and TV, we reached a significantly younger audience than we would normally have done, not least in the United States. It meant that we were being heard by children, as well as older teenagers and beyond, and it began to show in the audiences at our live gigs. Quite suddenly we started seeing ten, eleven, twelve-year-olds down at the front of the stage, whilst in the back would be their sometimes hipster, sometimes bewildered, sometimes anxious-looking parents. Looking out into the crowd in Tempe in Arizona, in March 1998, during our song Big Mouth Strikes Again, where Alice Nutter comes on stage dressed as a cigarette-smoking, whiskey-drinking nun, we could see a worried parent stand up behind her daughter, putting her hands over the girl’s ears. That song was a tip of the hat, or should I say habit, to dead American comedian Lenny Bruce. Having had a hit record which did not necessarily reflect many of the other aspects of our work, not least the adaptation of Bruce’s exploration of profanity in the nun repeating the mantra “bullshit, motherf**ker, bullshit,” the parental reaction was hardly surprising. None of us in the band had children at the time, but we did perform that song late last year at the Chumbawamba farewell show in front of our own pre-teen children. ....... Read the full article HERE at the Weeklings.

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Stanford researcher maps melodies used in Holocaust to control prisoners

Stanford Report, July 18, 2012 Stanford researcher maps melodies used in Holocaust to control prisoners German Studies doctoral student Melissa Kagen examines where music was played in Nazi concentration camps, uncovering how music can function as a means for controlling and torturing prisoners in present-day detention facilities. By Benjamin Hein The Humanities at Stanford It's hard to imagine Bing Crosby's classic ragtime song "Sweet Sue, Just You" wafting through a Nazi German concentration camp. But at Auschwitz-Birkenau – the most infamous Holocaust prison – a mix of American jazz and ragtime classics, as well as somber hymns and marching songs, could often be heard within the camp walls. This strange medley of melodies has long intrigued Melissa Kagen, a doctoral candidate in German Studies at Stanford. So last winter, Kagen began a research project to examine the camp's musical culture in the context of geographical space. She wanted to know if where the music played in the camps – whether in the kitchen, near a gate or in cells – had different effects on the inhabitants. Using survivor testimonies and camp administration records, she is developing digital maps of the "musical geography" of the prison. By focusing on the spatial aspects of music, Kagen's research offers historical insight into how music can be used as a means for controlling and torturing prisoners in present-day detention facilities. Because it was among the first prison camps to systematically employ music in such a way, Auschwitz provides a valuable case study that sets a precedent for facilities such as Guantánamo Bay where music has been used as a form of "no-touch" torture. Measuring music's impact Scholars have long known that music was a regular part of life in Nazi concentration camps. But the inherently transient nature of sound has made it difficult to measure its impact on the camp and its inhabitants. "Music in the Holocaust is a relatively well-explored research topic," said Kagen, a student of modern German musicology and literature. "But because it does not leave a lasting historical footprint, it has not been considered spatially before." Kagen uses an unconventional interpretation method to translate the source material into a visual form. Rather than dwelling on the significance of a specific song, she focuses on references about the locations where music was heard. "Reading the first-hand accounts of prisoners, I noticed that one particular space – Block 24, near the camp entrance – kept coming up in relation to music," she said. Music, as Kagen discovered, provided a proportionally small number of prison guards with the means to maintain control over large portions of the camp without any actual physical presence. Read the full post HERE.

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Islamist Extremists Ban Ali Farka Toure's Music in His Hometown

The bastards: from the BBC last month: 6 December 2012 Last updated at 12:24 ET Blues for Mali as Ali Farka Toure's music is banned By Thomas Fessy BBC News, Bamako After making northern Mali's "Blues" music famous around the world, Ali Farka Toure is a legend in his home town of Niafunke, where he was mayor until his death in 2006. The memorial to him is still intact but his music is no longer heard in the town's streets. "The town has gone silent," says 28-year-old farmer Ousmane Maiga (not his real name) over the phone. "It's way too quiet". Islamist fighters have taken over Niafunke, which sits on the banks of the river Niger 100km (60 miles) south-west of Timbuktu. They have introduced a strict social code: Women and girls must be covered, young men cannot wear loose trousers and all forms of music are banned. Residents say two young men were whipped last month after they were caught smoking tobacco. Toure was just one of a host of stars who have turned music into one of Mali's best known exports. "Music is so much part of our culture," says Mr Maiga. "It's everywhere here, I miss listening to it over tea with my friends on the weekend. I miss attending wedding ceremonies and baptisms." All time great It was the music of northern Mali that Toure took to the world, its lilting, mournful tones reaching an international audience when he teamed up with his US soulmate, Ry Cooder, to produce the Grammy-winning album Talking Timbuktu in 1994. He was ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as among the 100 great guitarists of all time and starred in the Martin Scorsese documentary, Feel Like Going Home, which traced the roots of the blues back to West Africa. But these roots are now threatened. Niafunke and other towns in northern Mali have been plunged into a cultural darkness. Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda have banned everything they deem to be against Sharia, or Islamic law. "They are destroying our culture," says another of Mali's most famous singers, Salif Keita. He is currently back home in Mali, preparing for a world tour to accompany the release of his latest album. "If there's no music, no Timbuktu, it means that there is no more culture in Mali," he adds, sitting in the grounds of his home on the small island he owns on the river Niger outside the capital, Bamako. Keita is referring to the destruction in June of the ancient shrines in Timbuktu's mosques. The buildings were Unesco World Heritage Sites but considered by the Islamists to be idolatrous. Dozens of musicians have fled south since the crisis began, among them Khaira Arby "the Voice of the North". She cannot return to her home in Timbuktu because Islamists have threatened to cut out her tongue, according to members of her band who have also fled south. She first stayed with a cousin but has resigned herself to renting a house in Bamako after she realised that she could be displaced for longer than she thought. "Islamists have jammed radio airwaves," she tells me while her guitarists and percussionist adjust their instruments for an evening rehearsal in her small living-room. The two guitars are plugged into one small amplifier producing a heavily distorted sound. The band's equipment was looted when rebels marched into Timbuktu. Arby sits on the edge of her sofa. She looks sad, but soon her eyes close and her voice climbs and falls with the guitar riffs. Ringtones banned Song completed, she tries to make sense of what is happening to her country. "They're even confiscating mobile phones and replacing ringtones with Koranic verses," she laments. From Timbuktu to Gao, telephones have become the only way to listen to music lately. Those who have risked turning a stereo on have immediately attracted the attention of the Islamist police. Their equipment would be either seized or smashed. Read the full story and additional information HERE.

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