Following are just a few observations!
jobyts
Starting with baby steps, we can play all the notes with a quarter note, skip all the dynamics, staccato, legato... Keep it all for improvisation.
This will make everything pretty bland. Very few melodies are written using nothing shorter than quarter notes. Eighth notes are vital. Even "Few of my favorite things" has eighth notes, and would sound a bit odd without them.
I just counted "Few of my favourite things" sheet music. If you skip all the redundant/repeating measures, it comes to a maximum of 30 measures (90 notes). In a particular signature, let's limit to, say 15 notes. That brings it to 15^90 permutations.
15^90 is approximately 10^106. If simply a serial generation of all possibilities is used, and 100 of these examined per day, it would take 10^104 days to go through all possibilities. This would amount to 2.74^101 years. (The universe is only approximately 1.5^10 years old so this "brute force approach obviously won't work.) To limit these, you would need to make use of all the rules possible that define what constitutes "good music", and programmers have been working on that for over fifty years. It's not as easy as some would like to believe.
I remember from my AI undergrad class that there are 10^120 combinations in a chessboard. So it's less complex than a chess AI.
Because of its artificial and well-structured nature, the rules of Chess are easy by comparison.
bassplayer142
How about a computer that learned off a musician. If someone plugged into it and started jamming out on the guitar then you could program the computer to find relationships in that particular persons style.
This would require tremendous artificial intelligence capability. Presently, our artificial intelligence is not up to that job. This capability awaits a major breakthrough in associative processor design - - like the human brain.
amezcua
Jobyts
I read a history of the French mathematician Mersenne.He was fascinated by musical subjects and proved that there were 40,320 possible combinations of 8 notes.
Music is a subjective, emotional experience, and as such, cannot be "proven". What needs to be done is to define what makes the music appealing. This was not the case in Mersenne's day. Then, the church defined what was acceptable, and it imposed stiff strictures on top of a very limited structure of what is acceptable. Today, what is acceptable and good is much greater.
My "lost" post referred to a book by Barlow and Morgenstern to show that most famous tunes are built on groups of 8 notes.The book is ;A Dictionary of Musical Themes.
Where is this reference in the book? I didn't see it in my copy (it's an old one) I would like to find it.
Your idea to make a computer generate combinations actually works .
You will notice a lot of replies refer to you switching on a computer and waiting for the stuff to land in your lap. That is not what you suggested.You put the important ingredient in there.You would decide what was worth keeping.
I don't think people were making that mistake. I certainly understood that the evaluation of the "melodies" would be done by people. The problem is the magnitude of what would have to be evaluated - - most of it bad - - unless the generating program has intelligence to define what the rules of acceptability are - - and this takes music structural knowledge by the programmer - - preferably with good artificial intelligence. This will not be an easy task.
I have tried this and it does work and a lot quicker than I expected.
Tell us about it. It sounds as if you have succeeded where others have found enormous difficulty.
The KEY point is that sitting before a blank sheet of paper is enormously more difficult than sifting through random 8 notes which QUITE OFTEN produces musical combinations.
Explain! This is totally unclear.
For efficiency I collected groups of notes and then played them out on a piano afterwards.
Random or composed?
In the Eurovision Song contest most pieces played do not follow the 8 note "rule" and that`s why they are mostly rubbish.
Are you referring to the Diatonic scale (plus one). In any case you must add two more "notes", one for "rest" value (no note), and the other for note continuation (ie. for "Diiiinnnngggg" rather than "Ding - Ding") such as a quarter note rather than two eighth notes.
jobyts
A decent computer chess AI program remembers 10^120 positions. The difficulty in creating computer generated tunes lies not in finding out all the combinations. The difficulty is in choosing which tune is better than the other one. In a chess program, there is deterministic way to find out move A is better than move B. But choosing a tune would be much harder for a computer. It's harder, but doable with some human interaction.
Therein lies the rub! Have you created or laid-out these AI routines? If so, you have what others before you have found considerably difficult.
Use internet, ask people to listen to x tunes and choose the best 2 from it. Do it recursively until the number of tunes are small enough for someone to listen.
Will they be paid?
hel
Even if a program were made that can follow all the established rules of music theory, the computer won't be able to determine when it's necessary to break these rules for the sake of making the music sound better.
That's also why only certain people are composers. Being able to listen and determine what sounds good and knowing how to make it better is difficult!
His program will never beat a good human. The task is just too subjective.
hel
First off, I don't think you need more than an average brain to compose music. People have started composing at very young ages, when their brains weren't fully developed. (this includes people who aren't famous, not just mozart.)
Second, taking a tune derived from an algorithm to the point where people will want to purchase it in some form is a process that would take an excruciating amount of time and effort. In fact, making the tune is the easy part: developing it into a piece is the bulk of the composing. The process of turning a tune into a concerto or film score is what puts food on the table for composers: nobody wants to buy 8 note melodies.
That process is typically shortened by the amount of people's knowledge and musical experience--especially their ability to listen and analyze what they're hearing.
(“To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.” Igor Stravinsky)
A masterpiece is exactly what it sounds like: a piece made by somebody who is a master of what they are doing. (Whether it be painting, writing, or composing)
And all the people I know who have mastered the art of writing music usually don't need inspiration from a computer.
Those are great observations!