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Welcome to Magenta – Google music AI project

magenta.tensorflow.org

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Re: Welcome to Magenta – Google music AI project

#61

Post by 6stringmerc »

ssalazar wrote: post #57

The more interesting application of this IMO is not replacing current popular/practicing musicians and artists but enabling non-professionals who have some musical inclination but limited time/skill/etc. Imagine a synthesizer for dance music with knobs for high level parameters like "grimy-ness" or "shine." Rather than auto generate a complete song with no user input, semantic control could be offered using learned m…

Many of the tools you describe are already out in the field. Ableton Live and MAX4LIVE really opens up whole new sectors of tools for those who might be interested. There is a learning curve for music making software though, and it can be rather steep. That said, Instant Haus [1] does sort of what you describe, though it is targeted more for practicing musicians. I'm a fan of GarageBand's "Drummer" as well.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoIcewM8sKY

Re: Welcome to Magenta – Google music AI project

#62

Post by vthallam »

annalewiss wrote: post #42

Evaluating the output of generative models is deceivingly difficult.

If Google does it, they can as well sneak in some of these to Play Music play lists, see the response on no of replays and stuff and gauge the overall quality and likability. Basically crowd source the reviews.

Re: Welcome to Magenta – Google music AI project

#63

Post by dandelany »

thomasahle wrote: post #37
my_username_is_ wrote: post #3

Having recently spent some time browsing the submissions of /r/deepdream and seeing how far computer generated imaging has come, I have no doubts that one day we will be listening to wonderful sounds that are generated by artificial intelligence. However an intrinsic part of the music (to me, anyways) as an art form, is the humanity of it. A computer can generate lyrics that are relatable on the surface, but knowing…

> but knowing that there isn't a person behind those words, feeling what I'm feeling, definitely detracts from the experience of the whole. I recently had a discussion about this with a musician. I said that I didn't like when music was produced (and certainly lyrics written by) somebody else than the performer. I said it took away from the experience of 'getting to know' the person I was listening to. She basically…

An interesting point, but s/person/people/ and the same argument still applies. It's about the humanity, not the individual.

Re: Welcome to Magenta – Google music AI project

#64

Post by 6stringmerc »

maroonblazer wrote: post #50
6stringmerc wrote: post #49

Strange, the article doesn't link to the output: https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6577761/G... I had a listen yesterday. It's okay. Nothing revolutionary. Competent though.

Sounds like something you'd hear as a soundtrack to an ad for a computing device.

Yeah it's not too far off from what a generally smart music algorithm would crank out. I get that it's a different approach though.

I think it's funny they added drums to make it a bit more listenable, because otherwise I think people would generally tune out after about 1/3 of the tune because it's okay but not really engaging.

Re: Welcome to Magenta – Google music AI project

#65

Post by aaronwidd »

What this will change probably isn't pop music, it's soundtracks for TV commercials, video games, shows, movies etc.

Currently to put music in something you need to license it somehow, in most cases the generic music you hear in most media is sourced from a company that has a library of royalty free songs that they sell for a pretty hefty license fee.

Imagine being able to instead go into some software and punch in some keywords to describe the scene, the duration, track what happens in the scene on a timeline of some sort and let the computer render original music for the score. No middle men, no musicians, no royalties or licenses other than for the software. It would change the industry overnight.. and make being a professional musician even less promising of a career choice than it is today...

Re: Welcome to Magenta – Google music AI project

#66

Post by shams93 »

aaronwidd wrote: post #65

What this will change probably isn't pop music, it's soundtracks for TV commercials, video games, shows, movies etc. Currently to put music in something you need to license it somehow, in most cases the generic music you hear in most media is sourced from a company that has a library of royalty free songs that they sell for a pretty hefty license fee. Imagine being able to instead go into some software and punch in s…

That's a really good point, there's a market opportunity for a soundtrack generator that does a decent job of producing usable generic music for video productions.

Re: Welcome to Magenta – Google music AI project

#67

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

shams93 wrote: post #66
aaronwidd wrote: post #65

What this will change probably isn't pop music, it's soundtracks for TV commercials, video games, shows, movies etc. Currently to put music in something you need to license it somehow, in most cases the generic music you hear in most media is sourced from a company that has a library of royalty free songs that they sell for a pretty hefty license fee. Imagine being able to instead go into some software and punch in s…

That's a really good point, there's a market opportunity for a soundtrack generator that does a decent job of producing usable generic music for video productions.

There is and yamaha (?) owns one, but I can't find it right now. It was like band in a box, but even better.

Re: Welcome to Magenta – Google music AI project

#68

Post by SubiculumCode »

alive2007 wrote: post #28
ashleyblackmore wrote: post #25

People want and need other people around, doing human things. Even if the musical output was impressive, I can't think of people developing a deep relationship with it outside of novelty. Algorithms are cold, and music is usually very much the opposite - I can see an "uncanny valley" effect cropping up with the imitative forms: people hearing something that is supposed to come across as laden with emotion, instead le…

I see this sort of application having a lot of use in the kinds of derivative pop music developed by ensembles of songwriters and manufactured purely to generate radio hits. Bacon's Triptych of George Dyer is genius. The average person listening to Taylor Swift just does not care about Bacon's Triptych of George Dyer. In a way, Magenta's job is not besting Bach. By the definition of Bach (a human being who changes th…

I disagree about the songs creep and smells like teen spirit being generic. These were exceptionallu crafted pop songs that expressed heart wrenching emotion. Nothing like the typical pop song at all.

Re: Welcome to Magenta – Google music AI project

#69

Post by samfisher83 »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #5

If AI generated music works out and becomes popular will people actually optimize for quality of music or instead you would have an Engineering team design the next Pop star which would be optimizing for Profitability and marketability.

Pop stars are already engineered. You have guys like stargate, dr. luke, etc.

Re: Welcome to Magenta – Google music AI project

#70

Post by transpy »

my_username_is_ wrote: post #3

Having recently spent some time browsing the submissions of /r/deepdream and seeing how far computer generated imaging has come, I have no doubts that one day we will be listening to wonderful sounds that are generated by artificial intelligence. However an intrinsic part of the music (to me, anyways) as an art form, is the humanity of it. A computer can generate lyrics that are relatable on the surface, but knowing…

> However an intrinsic part of the music (to me, anyways) as an art form, is the humanity of it.

I agree with the sentiment. But from a perceptual perspective, it's getting harder and harder to distinguish what is synthetic and what is organic. The trumpets, strings, and keys you hear on a song you like on the radio? It's very probable that they weren't played by humans: they might have been programmed and the sounds come from a massive, hyper sampled sound bank.

If we did an experiment, and recruited even expert musicians, and we asked them to classify sound clips in 'played/programmed' categories, I bet they wouldn't get them right.

David Cope's experiments showed that: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jul/11/david-cop...

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