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A.I. Duet: A piano that responds to you

aiexperiments.withgoogle.com

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Re: A.I. Duet: A piano that responds to you

#21

Post by jff »

hellofunk wrote: post #14
catnaroek wrote: post #10

To whoever implemented this AI: Can you actually play music yourself? Your AI can't. I tried to play “Satori Maiden” (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c9bea_thaM ), and your AI only replied with unmusical nonsense.

Go easy man. It's an "experiment" for a reason.

The problem is that this experiment might as well just replay a random collection of the N most recent notes played, with durations shuffled around, for all the musicality it demonstrates. He wired a neural network to some midi samples, and it didn't generate anything of use. Yeah, it was an experiment, and there's value in failed experiments, but you don't typically make a big website to present your failed experiment.

Maybe if you could set it to "Blues" or something like that, switching training sets, it would do better, but as is it's a nonsense generator.

Re: A.I. Duet: A piano that responds to you

#22

Post by 6stringmerc »

jgalloway___ wrote: post #18
catnaroek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm opposed to this trend of trying to replace actual understanding of the problem at hand with massive amounts of computation. If you want to write a program that writes music, then learn how music is actually written first. --- @hellofunk: If you want the ML algorithm to actually learn how to write music, at the very least, the programmer must be able to express the goal of producing musical sequences of notes.

It's opensource bro. Translate your problem to a requirement and impress us.

Look, it couldn't even follow a basic tempo when I was playing. That's not even close to being a "duet" as described. Maybe whoever wrote it has a limited grasp of English, because that experiment is a far, far, far, far, far, far, far cry from a "Duet" experience.

Well, one where you don't look over at your partner and wonder if the have any clue how music works before pushing them off the piano bench.

Re: A.I. Duet: A piano that responds to you

#23

Post by catnaroek »

jgalloway___ wrote: post #18
catnaroek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm opposed to this trend of trying to replace actual understanding of the problem at hand with massive amounts of computation. If you want to write a program that writes music, then learn how music is actually written first. --- @hellofunk: If you want the ML algorithm to actually learn how to write music, at the very least, the programmer must be able to express the goal of producing musical sequences of notes.

It's opensource bro. Translate your problem to a requirement and impress us.

Why would I? While I use computers to play music all the time, I don't think using computers to write music is a good idea in the first place.

---

@jgalloway___: I'm not sure if I'd call it an “expectation”. I just dislike it when people throw random shit at the wall and see what sticks. When you write music, you should first think how it's going to sound, convince yourself that it's plausibly good-sounding, and only then actually play it just to make sure it sounds good. If you do it the other way around (first play random stuff, then filter out what doesn't sounds good), you're a wanker.

---

@ohitsdom: I'm totally fine with improvisation driven by ideas, not random computation. Coming up with ideas on the fly is good. Passing noise as genuine ideas is not good.

Re: A.I. Duet: A piano that responds to you

#25

Post by jgalloway___ »

catnaroek wrote: post #23
jgalloway___ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's opensource bro. Translate your problem to a requirement and impress us.

Why would I? While I use computers to play music all the time, I don't think using computers to write music is a good idea in the first place. --- @jgalloway___: I'm not sure if I'd call it an “expectation”. I just dislike it when people throw random shit at the wall and see what sticks. When you write music, you should first think how it's going to sound, convince yourself that it's plausibly good-sounding, and only…

Ahh.. you have an expectation. Is that conducive to an experimental process?

Re: A.I. Duet: A piano that responds to you

#26

Post by jff »

ssharp wrote: post #19

My immediate reaction was to try and confuse it, so I played "Roll Call" from the Thomas show (kids are obsessed !) It's a bit chromatic so I thought it would have trouble, which it did. Next, I tried putzing around on the white keys but made sure to never hit a F or F#. I wanted to see if it would try and guess which key I was playing in, C or G major. It seemed to guess C most of the time, though one time I tried h…

You can use your keyboard, the middle row maps to the white keys and the upper row maps to black keys. Works better than a mouse for tempo, IMO.

Re: A.I. Duet: A piano that responds to you

#27

Post by GrinningFool »

standardly wrote: post #3
krosaen wrote: post #2

I like the concept and the framing of the demo is really cool, but the actual music generated in response to me doing basic things like playing a blues riff or a pentatonic scale was usually just a repeat of some fragment of what I was playing. It felt like something that could be built using a basic heuristic...

Agreed, it seems to either play a note you've played or pick a random interval. The interval and timing perhaps aren't truly random but it makes no difference to the listener's ear. Doesn't appear to have any concept of, or the ability to learn, scales, rhythm, or melody (or chords). Neat idea, but akin to playing piano with a 5-year-old (perhaps not as fun).

Of course that may change as people could be expanding its training through their interactions with it.

Re: A.I. Duet: A piano that responds to you

#28

Post by frogpelt »

6stringmerc wrote: post #22
jgalloway___ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's opensource bro. Translate your problem to a requirement and impress us.

Look, it couldn't even follow a basic tempo when I was playing. That's not even close to being a "duet" as described. Maybe whoever wrote it has a limited grasp of English, because that experiment is a far, far, far, far, far, far, far cry from a "Duet" experience. Well, one where you don't look over at your partner and wonder if the have any clue how music works before pushing them off the piano bench.

That's too many fars.

Re: A.I. Duet: A piano that responds to you

#30

Post by ohitsdom »

catnaroek wrote: post #23
jgalloway___ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's opensource bro. Translate your problem to a requirement and impress us.

Why would I? While I use computers to play music all the time, I don't think using computers to write music is a good idea in the first place. --- @jgalloway___: I'm not sure if I'd call it an “expectation”. I just dislike it when people throw random shit at the wall and see what sticks. When you write music, you should first think how it's going to sound, convince yourself that it's plausibly good-sounding, and only…

That's fine that it's not your style, but experimentation is a huge source of new music and reinvented ideas. Dismissing any music that wasn't strictly planned seems a little silly.
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