
Generating MIDI melody from lyrics using LSTM-GANs - groar
https://github.com/yy1lab/Lyrics-Conditioned-Neural-Melody-Generation
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gwern
> Q5 In the case of Markov, etc., I understand that the generation may be not
> very conformant to the style learnt, unless using a high order Markov but
> with the risk of recopying entire sequences from the corpus and thus
> plagiat. But, in the case of a RNN-based architecture [9], what is the
> rationale?-------------------- A5: As mentioned before, RNN does the similar
> work as LSTM in our work. But without including a discriminator, it only
> learns transmission probability between adjacent notes, but does not promise
> that generated sequences look like real ones.

Come on, guys, that's just not true. You do _not_ need an adversarial loss to
get good quality melodies. Look at Sturm's char-RNN on ABC notation, or
OpenAI's MuseNet, or a bunch of Project Magenta work, or my own GPT-2 ABC
music (MIDI in progress):
[https://www.gwern.net/GPT-2-music](https://www.gwern.net/GPT-2-music) Or for
that matter, any generative model trained with a non-adversarial loss
(anything using GPT-2 for example).

In fact, generally, everyone _avoids_ GANs for sequence generation because
they work so badly compared to regular likelihood training... (Just at a skim,
their 'baseline' is pretty suspicious. I'd expect an ablation for the GAN, not
comparing their 400-unit LSTM to... a 100-unit LSTM
[https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/N19-4015.pdf](https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/N19-4015.pdf)
? Really?)

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zozbot234
feynmanliang's BachBot and hexahedria's biaxial-rnn also have very good melody
generation, and these deal with polyphonic music which is quite a bit harder
than simple monody/monophonic music.

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thomasfl
Oh no, they're ruining popular music as we know it. Anybody can just push some
buttons and generate the next hit song. All you need is some with artificial
lyrics, artificial melody, artificial vocal (Yamaha vocaloid), on top of a
beat bought on the net.

~~~
nkrisc
I know you're being sarcastic but I always thought the concern over the
provenance of art is strange. If a computer can generate good music, why does
it matter that a computer created it if it's good music? And if computers are
just spitting out terrible music, who cares?

Same goes for computer generated visual art, painting created by elephants, or
whatever else you can think of that challenges the position of humans as the
sole creators of art.

~~~
Juliate
Depends if you consider it pure raw material (I think it is) that you can use
to convey something of your own or if you can relate to some point to it (and
do the same, but to some further extent).

At a rather utilitarian level, one wouldn't consider a spoon exactly the same
way whether it was: 1) carved out of wood by someone you can relate to (by
history, reasons, knowledge); as a unique piece, or part of a series; 2) or
built in a factory, by workers; and available in the same fashion in X
instances; 3) or built in a factory by robots; and available as an exact copy
in X instances; 4) or a pure unique artefact that got the practical shape of a
spoon.

And that would be for a spoon only.

I am of the school of thought that one doesn't make art without the intent of
communicating/transmiting (it/through it) with other people, however
remote/intimate it can be. If only because one cannot live alone.

In this line, whatever pleasing something can be, if there's no
transmission/communication/need/desire behind the creation of it, if there is
no social reason behind it, it has no resonance, no affect to me that makes me
actually relate to it (and to the person that thought of it, fell on it,
carved it in their words, sounds, silences, colors, shapes, steps, etc.).

To me, whatever the artist intent was, when anything is done, it is done by
someone - this someone cared, if only enough to make it, and that way attached
something to their work.

That is something I can try to relate to (to the product itself, and to the
intent perhaps).

When something is produced by a system, there still may be the intent of the
person(s) that designed this system. But it may also be totally independant of
the designers scope. That is interesting also, as pure rough material.

But it isn't remotely as profound, interesting, human as something that is
done by someone real.

~~~
ddoeth
Now consider this: Something generated by a computer, in this case music, has
no intent.

But what happens if I curate it, judge it, only publish the best ones. Through
that I add my intent.

Where is the difference between curating a number of computer generated songs
into an album, and curating a number of computer generated sounds into a piece
of music?

Both require some sort of talent, both add intent to something that a computer
generated.

~~~
Juliate
Of course. You add your intent of curation/collection. The part that's
original to you is the curation itself. Not the songs being collected
themselves.

It's the same with instruments that generate a sound (whether mechanical or
electronic ones). The sound source might be more or less generated. But what
you do with it, the music you compose and play with it, that is original to
your self. But the source sound material is just that: raw material.

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dimmuborgir
Judging by the four provided melodies: 1) the notes have very little rhythmic
variation. 2) the melodies don't seem to have any concept of metre or metric
accent.

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NPMaxwell
Music, like weaving, is a predecessor in using algorithms to do work. For
hundreds of years, music theorists have been codifying the algorithms, or
creating new algorithms, that create good music (for particular definitions of
good). Like other code instantiated in a network, this code is more tailored
to specific prior states and is less available to analysis of its details than
prior efforts.

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tabtab
I always wanted a "demo engine" whereby one feeds in the melody and chord
name, and then a style(s). The AI would then use pattern matching to make a
fuller score in the chosen style(s). The output could be midi and/or an audio
file (such as .WAV). Bonus points for vocals if given lyrics. I could make
Elvis diet parodies: "Ain't nothing but a round dog..." Band-in-a-Box software
sort of does this, but lacks realism in my opinion.

