
Google’s AI Invents Sounds Humans Have Never Heard Before - rising-sky
https://www.wired.com/2017/05/google-uses-ai-create-1000s-new-musical-instruments/
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pgodzin
Looking forward to a more interactive demo of this tech. The headline is
ridiculous though - I can use a RNG for a handful of frequencies and create a
sound humans have never heard before.

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ccvannorman
These were utterly unimpressive sounds.

I can replicate these sounds in a few minutes mixing on my 10 year old $120
Yamaha keyboard, if it's not in one of the built-in 999 x 999 sounds (because
I can combine two sounds easily using the built in functionality), then I can
mix it myself -- but it is already so close to the built-in sound.

Will be excited if an AI can make instruments that move me.

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letier
I'm asking myself if a synth is just a boring application for a model like
this. But maybe it would be possible to implement a new kind of efficient
sound compression algorithm.

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DanBC
It's a shame the article uses soundcloud clips, because I suspect the end
sounds aren't the impressive bit. I think it's the user interface that's the
interesting bit here.

> In addition to the NSynth “slider” that Engel recently demonstrated at
> Google headquarters, the team has also built a two-dimensional interface
> that lets you explore the audible space between four different instruments
> at once. And the team is intent on taking the idea further still, exploring
> the boundaries of artistic creation. A second neural network, for instance,
> could learn new ways of mimicking and combining the sounds from all those
> instruments. AI could work in tandem with AI.

A video of this would have been much more useful to me.

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dkural
To me it sounds exactly like they're playing the two instruments on top of
each other, if not 'side by side' \- which is to say, not like something I've
never heard before.

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dsmithatx
Agreed, I was quite disappointed. I actually thought we would here new sounds
humans have never heard before. This was more like two instruments picked from
an orchestra or, playing two bank settings on a synth on a split keyboard.

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multi_tude
The instrument blending is unique, but agree that this was utterly
underwhelming.

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vectorEQ
oh wow. music producers invent sounds no one heard before all the time >.>
ever listen to neurofunk? ;D Why dont they make an AI that does something
useful for a change instead of one that can look at cat pictures and produce
jibberish!

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undersuit
Children are seldom useful in the first 13-21 years of their life, why do AIs
have to be useful before they are ready?

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thomasdziedzic
> Children are seldom useful in the first 13-21 years of their life

[Citation Needed]

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nzjrs
These sort of headlines make it clear we are in a goldrush right now. What a
ridiculous title.

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dmix
Any article about AI contains tons of hand-wavey hyped tech. That's nothing
new.

The website for their project [1] is much more toned down, so you can blame
the journalist or Google's PR team for pitching an interesting angle.

[1]
[https://magenta.tensorflow.org/nsynth](https://magenta.tensorflow.org/nsynth)

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bykovich2
These sound like bad synths.

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dmix
This is off topic but the website the author linked to for "Moogfest" has a
very unique design:

[http://www.moogfest.com/](http://www.moogfest.com/)

Haven't seen anything like that before. Scrolling marques everywhere. I wonder
if this will be a new trend.

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fenwick67
It sort-of is a new trend.

[http://brutalistwebsites.com/](http://brutalistwebsites.com/)

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marchenko
Giorgio Moroder did it first.

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ender89
In related news, google has created the first electric hipster.

