

Music Created by Learning Computer Is Impressive - kkleiner
http://singularityhub.com/2009/10/09/music-created-by-learning-computer-getting-better/

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nswanberg
NPR covered David Cope's software, named "Emily Howell", this weekend:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1137194...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113719483&ft=1&f=2)

It's funny that All Things Considered, not ArsTechnica or singularityhub,
included a little detail that will amuse some HN readers:

 _RAZ: What exactly is Emily Howell, and how does she, it work?

Prof. COPE: Well, that could be a very long answer, but simply put, it's a
computer program I've written in the computer programming language LISP._

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bhousel
Sample MP3s are here: <http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/mp3page.htm>

I think the Chopin one is eerily good.. Perhaps there's an uncanny valley for
music too?

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jpwagner
I studied Cope's book and synthetic music in college.

His Chopin pieces on the surface kind of sound like a Chopin piece, but when
you look at the underlying forms the complexity just isn't there.
Musicologists can consistently identify the synthetic pieces.

~~~
CWuestefeld
I'm a little skeptical about the role of snobbery in this. It's impossible to
do a properly blinded experiment, because the folks with the necessary
knowledge already are able to identify any Chopin (or Bach or Beethoven)
piece, and thus know _a priori_ which is the synthetic piece. This seems
rather too similar to the story about winetasters (e.g., here, sorry for the
cache link:
[http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:SB6S068de0gJ:www.latimes...](http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:SB6S068de0gJ:www.latimes.com/business/la-
fi-
wine4-2009sep04,0,3295012.story+wine+tasting+repeatability&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk)
)

~~~
jpwagner
Snobbery is not the right word, but you make a valid point.

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grosales
The last part of this Radiolab episode features EMI. Overall it's a very
interesting talk.

<http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/21>

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tpyo
Did anyone find the Beethoven subtly similar to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata?

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johnfn
It was kind of clear that these songs were modeled off of specific previously
written songs. The Bach sounded a lot like Invention 8, Beethoven's and his
Sonata, Joplin and Maple leaf rag.

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wallflower
See also Wolfram Research Lab's Mathematica-driven ring tone generator:

<http://tones.wolfram.com/>

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biohacker42
Or maybe popular music is simplistic and this is impressive compared to it?

