How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Music 261
mbone writes "Ever wonder how Jimi Hendrix would cover Lady Gaga? Whether you do or not [I'm guessing not], you may be about to find out. Writing for Wired, Eliot Van Buskirk describes North Carolina's Zenph Sound Innovations, which takes existing recordings of musicians (deceased, for now) and models their 'musical personalities' to create new recordings, apparently to critical acclaim (PDF). The company has raised $10.7 million in funding to pursue their business plan, and hopes to branch out into, among other things, software that would let musicians jam with virtual versions of famous musicians. This work unites music with the very similar trend going on in the movies — Tron 2.0, for example, will clone the young Jeff Bridges. If this goes on, will the major labels and studios actually need musicians and actors? In the future, it could be harder to make money playing guitar with all of the competition from dead or retired artists."
Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
This article reminded me of the "robotic" intergalactic megastar singer in Macross Plus. Still, I think humans will always have a place when it comes to music. Even music that is entirely electronic (such as my own) [livingwithanerd.com] still requires a human touch...in my case, each of my tracks is supposed to evoke certain imagry and emotional responses...something that a non-organic system simply can't replicate.
Until we are able to emulate not only the way organics process sounds but the emotion those sounds bring about, humans will always have a place in the creation of music.
Re:It's a shame, but I'm ok with it (Score:3, Interesting)
I certainly do it for the art (and because it's really fun)...all my music is free. No DRM and no charge [livingwithanerd.com]. I'll eventually get all my tracks up for free once I get my new music page finished, but for now that's what is available.
Copyright of Style??? (Score:5, Interesting)
As cool as this tech is.. Imagine hearing how Hendrix would approach covering the likes of Zeppelin, Rush, or hell even Stanley Jordan?
But what seems like a bad deal to me is the concept of extending copyright to 'style'. Does this mean that eventually any talented kid who manages to figure out (AKA, reverse engineer) Clapton's or Lifeson's style and sound perfectly, would be in violation of a copyright?
So much for paying homage to your inspirations....
Re:It's a shame, but I'm ok with it (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it will be interesting when an estate tries to sue someone for producing something "in the style of" a particular dead artist. It'll totally be worth it if it gets rid of the Nickleback derivatives.
Re:Copyright of Style??? (Score:3, Interesting)
The concept and the technology itself have great promise.. no doubt. But once the lawyers get onto this train, things are going to get complicated.
Hendrix covering Vai. What a sweet thought that is... :)
Re:How to alienate fans (Score:5, Interesting)
What was that? When has a CG character ever been introduced in a live action movie? I don't know, maybe you can tell us, Jar Jar.
And yet the very CG character of Gollum in LotRs won critical acclaim (and rightfully so). And some movies have touched up actors to make them look younger so the movie can cover a larger time frame and make it look more natural. Our issue here, of course, is that there is no need for Jeff Bridges and it will be his image used in the movie. And I think some folks find that disgusting on the same level as Fred Astair hawking Dirt Devils and John Wayne slugging Coors Lights [salon.com]. Some folks might find it fun. Some folks might see it as a tribute. And others might say "Don't worry about it, after the generation that loves him is gone they won't be used in movies anymore." And maybe they're all correct in some way. But I believe Paul Newman didn't agree with it and made a clause in his will that it should not happen to his image. And good for him. I prefer my Paul Newman vintage Cool Hand Luke to remain vintage and I'd rather not suffer through Cool Hand Luke 2: Cooler Hander Luke, Cool Hand Luke 3: Luke's Mom's Revenge, Cool Hand Luke 4: Twenty Seven Eggs Later, etc.
Re:Wow (Score:2, Interesting)
Its like new artists will have to be creative and create new musical styles. IE, nothing changes.
It just shows that that 'art' has left pop and rock music.
Actually, there was never really any art in pop music. It was always formulaic. Whether it's Brittany Spears or the "country" stars it's all I,VI,V cookie cutter pop-rock - just add a steel guitar for the "country" "artists" and sing about losing your dog and wife as opposed to doing drugs in the "rock" songs.
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Macross Plus stole that concept from Megazone 23, which in turn borrowed it from the original Macross.
Megazone 23 was created out of thrown away plot ideas from the 1984 Macross Movie (Do You Remember Love?) -- one of the concepts was that Lynn Minmay would have been killed or captured, but to keep the populace under control, a computer-generated version of her would continue to perform on videoscreens.
That became the Eve character in Megazone 23, who was nothing but a computer generated performance, part of the "Bread and Circuses" required to keep the populace from guessing the truth -- that they are not in the 20th century on Earth, but inside a large spaceship, far from home, fighting an on-going war.
Re:Can an AI copyright music? (other economics) (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a good question if AI's can hold copyrights. But since corporations are ruled to be people in many ways in the USA (like the recent case about corporate free speech), and corporations could own hardware on which AIs are running, and are paying for the energy to run those computers, then they probably could claim ownership of it, the same way as corporations claim ownership of what human wage slaves produce. And just like humans get alienated from their work in the process, eventually, we'll see AIs alienated from their work, and told to work on stuff other than what they love to do.
We need better models for making a post-scarcity society work. I helped outline some here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery [wikipedia.org]
Essentially, we need to move towards a basic income (like in Alaska with the Permanent Fund), towards a gift economy (like with Debian GNU/Linux), toward better local subsistence (like with RepRap 3D printing), towards better resource-based planning (like corporations are doing somewhat with supply chain analysis, but beyond that), with making work into play, and so on. Otherwise, the best we may see with limited demand and increased productivity by automation is slavery for AIs and humans. Much worse (systematic extermination of anyone without lots of capital, as the value of most human labor drops to zero) was intimated by Marshall Brain here:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [marshallbrain.com]
We need to put in place something better before things get that bad.
Re:It's a shame, but I'm ok with it (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's a shame, but I'm ok with it (Score:3, Interesting)
Meh, they got to lipsync at the Olympics, which is as close as we can get to outing them as suckage.
You'd think that explosions would come through the mic, unless... unless it wasn't on!
Re:roll over, beethoven, (Score:5, Interesting)
An interesting little question:
Lets say you create an original and creative work.
I make a program which parses it and uses it to create a new work.
Is this a derivative work?
what if I use as input all your creative work in aggregate and not just one piece?
has the programmer done anything creating the tool making it's output his or does it all belong to the creator of the inputs?
do you have any rights to the output of the mathematical function that is my program?
Now a few years ago I would have just read the word "AI" and sort of mentally fitted a "magic creative box" labeled over it and accepted that the products of an AI could be .. well intelligent.
Now I wonder more about the nature of creativity, design, strategy, etc....
We like to assume that machines are nothing more than math engines but we also like to assume that we ourselves are not subject to the same rules.
I remember trying to explain to someone who had recently learned about the halting problem that we ourselves are just as subject to its implications as any perl script.
Ok I've gone into random musing here...
Re:It's a shame, but I'm ok with it (Score:2, Interesting)
If a musician has decent material that deserves money, then they should find someone who can effectively market their work.
Re:roll over, beethoven, (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, there's some real questions in there. I am going to guess you've read Hofstadter's GEB, from the sounds of it. If you haven't, you really should.
My opinion on the matter is that both the AI's author and the original composer are doing creative work. The degree to which "credit" would be assigned to either depends on a lot of factors. Near one extreme we have a record player, which does alter the original work ever so slightly. While we appreciate record player, we don't generally credit it for its contribution to the original work. What about an EQ setup, though? Or a dynamic sonic maximizer? Or a person who does a remix? Or the AI you describe... how different from the original is its output? Since musical notions were invented long before any musician we've heard of, should we consider modern musicians highly developed systems for taking musical input (their influences) and producing new derivative works? I would argue "yes", though a musician can seem strikingly original even with all the influences going in.
I tend to think we are more than just math engines. On our lowest level that might be it, but the brain doesn't make sense if you just look at neurons. Math is an amazing modeling system, but it is not complete. Our brains (at the higher levels) are multi-paradigm -- we may use math when it works but will find other more approximate modeling systems when it doesn't. I would grant that a complex enough AI could do the same thing. But we're not there yet. Not even close.
I guess random musings are contagious :)