Neno

The human composer is told exactly the same by society or teachers, although, yes, not by a programmer. And I'd say that a large amount of compositions on this website are bound by a remarkable degree of predictability too, even the best of them, regardless of the choice. Wouldn't it be auspicious instead? The threat will force us to survive, not the other way around. One might argue that, without goading from some outer factor we will be unwilling to modify ourselves, and we will sooner or later fade to irrelevance, because, on the macroscopic scale, The speed of technology is about to overwhelm the capability of natural evolution(or creation) to supply beings capable of directing it.. Viruses, and to a lesser extent bacteria, are capable of evolving at sufficient speed to cope with the innovations of technology, because their structures are simple. This is not so with a human being or an orangutan, or a similar complex creature, the evolutionary bettering of which takes at least millions of years, because this process is largely by trial and error. Seen in this context, the pressure that the computer creates on humanity, threatening them with irrelevance if they do not return the challenge of progress with a countercharge, is something that should be celebrated as much as the KT event that ended the era of the bulky dinosaurs and paved the way for the nimble human beings.

That's true. The computer is a machine - it has no conceptions of ugly or beautiful. However, if we were able to completely map the structure, and define the functioning of the brain in concrete terms, reaching at the biological basis of what is beautiful or not, then it would be very much able to compose and innovate even before one has the desire. But this is irrelevant for the moment. David Cope's program analyses scores by composers to compose in their style. Plain and simple. He doesn't compose anything for the machine... Among many other things, the machine composed 5000 Bach chorales and they are offered for free by him. Except that no one makes decisions out of nowhere... When one makes such decisions, ignoring any rules, the output is nonsense. Indeed, we humans are quite limited in terms of the initial conditions we impose on "listenable" music. The range of frequencies we can perceive is limited, the range of the combinations that we perceive as being "pleasurable" is even more limited. Then, am I justified in suggesting that one's teacher is the real composer whenever he composes something, in light of the fact that the initial input is always provided by the teacher in the form of the rules and conventions of Western Tradition? Obviously such an argument is absurd; when a computer composes a piece, the piece is its property, despite the fact that, of course, it never actually composes anything at all, it just operates an algorithm. It's up to all of us to ask how much we do the same, by design or intuitively.

Indeed it's so obvious that there's nothing funny or even unusual about it at all. He just has chosen to call himself "the author". What's so bad about it? http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/young-composers-should-work-young-performers-4409.html Here he states who he is. No controversy. The "articles" may be pointless piffle, but that's no justification for treating their author in such a hostile manner. It doesn't make either of you a genius to discover the obvious and rub it in his face. You guys are moderators...enough said.

Joel Benjamin was actually hired by IBM to help contrive the algorithm behind Deep Blue. Kasparov's major complaint throughout was that he wasn't allowed to access the code behind the machine, having to treat it as a newcomer that couldn't be picked apart to pieces and analysed. This element was of course absent in the case of Joel Benjamin, as he helped design it. With respect to the other, rather vague point, I'll just point out that although other players may have done better against some computers, Kasparov beat all of them anyway, directly or indirectly. It's better to give concrete examples.

David Cope's program can undoubtedly compose melodies, and these examples are harmonic sketches only because they are chorales - one wouldn't expect flashy meloies in a piece of devotional music. At his website he offers samples of his other scores, in the style of anyone from Mozart to Bartok, from operas to concertos, for a fee, but the fact is that a lot of people have already listened to his music, and most admit to being awed by the idea of their feelings being manipulated so powerfully and uniquely by a computer. What is the difference between having electrodes inside your brain, and being made happy or sad while listening to a piece composed by a computer? It's just that the physical presence of the metal is absent, otherwise there's no difference at all, at least in my opinion. Moving on to the subject of melodies, I will ask if Bach has melodies at least in his fugues? His music is mostly based on harmonic elaboration through symmetry, permutations and group theory, rather than any kind of divinely inspired Grace. He was an engineer, not a visionary. Nonetheless, I will claim that all music that comes after him is just a footnote to his work. Anyone who has studied the Moonlight sonata, or the Fifth Symphony will recognise Beethoven's talent in engineering variations on a simple theme, which is a mathematical skill, but is there really a melody in the symphony? As for Mozart...everyone knows how much melodic variety there is in his music. How will one construct melodies? Well here's an algorithm for constructing them, and infinite variety is already possible. 1. Write an eight-twelve-sixteen bar cantus firmus . There are already well know rules for writing one, but if one wants to write longer pieces of cf, it's always possible to add independent segments that are symmetric inside themselves, and connected at one end to the main line. 2. Now harmonise the cantus firmus, according to rules of counterpoint. Counterpoint is a clearcut algorithm, but it may be rid of its contrapuntal character later, by appending harmonic fillers at points in accordance with the style that one wishes to compose in. 3. Now write a theme. Alternatively.... 2a. Write a theme on to the cantus firmus. This will be the theme that will reappear on harmony notes of cf; it will keep appearing on the third and fifth of the phrase to provide coherence to the melody. The theme can be random, as long as it remains bound by the laws of rhythm. Any theme can be made to make any emotional impact with appropriate dynamics, accidentals, tempo, and of course, performance. Reference Mozart... 4. While writing the melody, a. Do not jump at the same pitch twice. b. Change the register and direction between or inside each bar for climax. c. Use one triad, based on the cantus firmus below, to create melodic elaborations based on the harmony. As long as melodic symmetry is preserved, a completely random rhythmic progression always succeeds. For example, if the cantus firmus is c, then our bar will travel between c and g, but the rhythmically accented points will always be on harmony notes and sevenths, and while moving to the next bar coherence will be achieved either by symmetry inside the beat, or by keeping the direction constant throughout successive bars. Of course this also has its own physhological effect, which may be manipulated to produce the desired effect. 5. Discard the cantus firmus. Elaborate on the elaboration to create a larger work. It is possible to write complex, non-chordal melodies in fifteen minutes with this method by hand, but I admit that it's hard to make use of it as described here (I'm not sure that anyone will be interested) and it goes without saying that one has no idea on how they will sound untill he plays them, but it nonetheless succeeds. A computer can churn out at the pace of a genius, in case one takes the trouble to program it.

Hi.. Western tradition is, as you know, algorithmic not stochastic. And we call the algorithm counterpoint. I'm pretty sure that using Markov Chains to analyse note by note the development of a bach chorale would hardly ever produce satisfactory results, and even if it did, it would do so through a massive waste of resources. Yes, stochastics and markov chains are used to create music, but that music is fundamentally different in conception from that by which, say Mozart, created his music. I hope that I haven't misunderstood you... In my opinion, the simple fact is that composing by hand at this age, while remaining loyal to those principles established in the past, like the avoidance of parallel perfects, is a massive exercise in futility and a pitiful waste of time and resources not because there's anything wrong with those rules, but because a computer is literally a million times better equipped than a human being to deal with the arising mechanical problems of the process, which may well comprise up to ninety-five percent of the burden of composing a piece. Even a work, which succeeds in perfectly following all the rules and principles of the Western tradition, is by no means anything more than a similarly crafted, mass produced piece by a computer, and what is more, we have to understand that we are pretty much at the infancy of the era of artificial intelligence. Even Gary Casparov, with all his awesome intelligence, was unable to consistently defeat a computer when faced with the prospect of having to face it within the limits of a predefined, well-formed algorithm. And ultimately, the process of creation within a game of chess, that is, the improvisation of new methods to counter problems arising during the progress of computation, is in no way different from the simple process of creating music. Both are very highly structured, and follow very rigid rules, if we will take the example of Bach or Mozart for instance. With the advent of the computing age, it's an undeniable fact that the process of composing music is or will soon be reduced to the mere creation of algorithms, as is the case with many other pursuits. Thus we should never allow ourselves to degenerate to the level of a calculator, by confining ourselves to the limits of an idiom, or in other words, a computational algorithm, be it baroque, classical, renaissance or whatever. And this can all be summarised in a simple sentence: Innovation is the only respectable, worthy path for the composer of our day, incomparably more so than in the past. To make my point...here're two samples from a Bach chorale composed by David Cope's program. I should as well add that he offers 5000 of these at his website for free. Pretty much the work of a lifetime for a human composer, and they are quite good. Although, as always with computers, there's nothing that prevents the algorithm behind them from being improved. bach-1.mid bach-2.mid bach-3.mid

Well, being a pessimist and bashing yourself will never help you to write better music! You should focus on the music, not yourself. Hard work always pays, so good luck! ;)

Thank you for the great comments! ;)

*sigh* I do appreciate the attention, and sympathise with your desperation, but there's nothing I can do to help you. You're *a little* amusing, but I'm not interesting in talking to you... Would that be clear enough?

Schubert... I'm sorry I can't help you anymore. PM me if you need help with understanding this.........

For some weird reason Jermiah Hong's comments only appeared two days after the date on them suggests, maybe Mike knows something about that... I like the second one of these, the g major allegro. Otherwise they're exercises, but I do like the second myself. Thank you all for the comments. I always appreciate them, mild or harsh.

Hi... Pravin, I don't plagiarise anything and it's rather stupid of you to say that I do when you certainly don't possess any kind of proof. Also you should have spared yourself the trouble of commenting on these after insulting me. It's hypocritical. Oh, never worry about the title. lol Dear Trout, what do you really expect me to do with melodies? :) Seriously, I don't plan to do anything right now - it was just important to know if they worked or not, and as they apparently are allright, I'm satisfied. Thanks a lot for the comments.

Hi. Thank you everyone for taking the time to comment on my files. The terrible truth is that I don't have an inkling on why everyone's so unanimous in condemning my work. I don't imply that you're wrong, but I simply don't understand why they have incited almost revulsion from everyone who listens to them.... What I try to avoid most when writing these is incoherence.Otherwise, they obviously have no form, because they were planned to be parts of an eight part sonata or etude, consisting of "long" melodies, as a demonstration of what I can do to myself principally. But I'm so perplexed that I'm going to stop posting here for a while. If what I see as passably good is as horrible as it is, I need some breathing time and a reevaluation.. Well...lol Oh, and I have Schoenberg's Fundamentals of Musical Composition...so I do know music, supposedly.

Apologies. Here're the mus files. c major, largo.MUS g major, alegro.MUS sonata.MUS

Hi Mark, Do you mean the midi? The flute is just the ordinary flute...? Ah, thanks, the midi file was too terrifying to listen to comfortably.