
Welcome to Magenta – Google music AI project - adamnemecek
http://magenta.tensorflow.org/welcome-to-magenta
======
my_username_is_
Having recently spent some time browsing the submissions of /r/deepdream and
seeing how far computer generated imaging has come, I have no doubts that one
day we will be listening to wonderful sounds that are generated by artificial
intelligence. However an intrinsic part of the music (to me, anyways) as an
art form, is the humanity of it. A computer can generate lyrics that are
relatable on the surface, but knowing that there isn't a person behind those
words, feeling what I'm feeling, definitely detracts from the experience of
the whole.

That being said, this is incredibly exciting to me, and I look forward to
seeing how it progresses, and probably challenges my ideas of what music is

~~~
thomasahle
> but knowing that there isn't a person behind those words, feeling what I'm
> feeling, definitely detracts from the experience of the whole.

I recently had a discussion about this with a musician. I said that I didn't
like when music was produced (and certainly lyrics written by) somebody else
than the performer. I said it took away from the experience of 'getting to
know' the person I was listening to.

She basically replied, that I was being extremely old fashioned, and that this
'idea' of music was very harmful for the business. She said it prevented
people from working together and each contributing what they did best.

If she's right, I guess we just have to interpret the music on its own, and
not see it as a mental state of some individual creator. Maybe this is related
to, when authors are annoyed that people identify them with their main
characters. In any case, non-individual art doesn't seem to be going away.

~~~
Ntrails
I only really care whether the singer is able to convey the emotion behind the
song. In reality I don't even know who writes a given song most of the time,
only the performer.

We can argue whether, for example, Adele is better at conveying emotion
because she wrote the song. What we shouldn't do is claim that it's impossible
for someone to do so if they didn't write the lyrics themselves.

Now, once you abstract that, does it matter whether the original writer was
human as long as they produce something a singer can then connect with
emotionally and then project? I don't know. I feel like ignorance would be
bliss.

------
aaronwidd
What this will change probably isn't pop music, it's soundtracks for TV
commercials, video games, shows, movies etc.

Currently to put music in something you need to license it somehow, in most
cases the generic music you hear in most media is sourced from a company that
has a library of royalty free songs that they sell for a pretty hefty license
fee.

Imagine being able to instead go into some software and punch in some keywords
to describe the scene, the duration, track what happens in the scene on a
timeline of some sort and let the computer render original music for the
score. No middle men, no musicians, no royalties or licenses other than for
the software. It would change the industry overnight.. and make being a
professional musician even less promising of a career choice than it is
today...

~~~
shams93
That's a really good point, there's a market opportunity for a soundtrack
generator that does a decent job of producing usable generic music for video
productions.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
There is and yamaha (?) owns one, but I can't find it right now. It was like
band in a box, but even better.

~~~
aaronwidd
Well, I just googled around and found my idea is not super unique.. already
found 2 teams working on it:

[https://www.jukedeck.com](https://www.jukedeck.com) [http://juke-
bot.com/](http://juke-bot.com/)

------
ashleyblackmore
People want and need other people around, doing human things. Even if the
musical output was impressive, I can't think of people developing a deep
relationship with it outside of novelty. Algorithms are cold, and music is
usually very much the opposite - I can see an "uncanny valley" effect cropping
up with the imitative forms: people hearing something that is supposed to come
across as laden with emotion, instead leads people to revulsion. What do we
get out of computers composing songs that are supposed to relate to the
fragility of the human condition?

Sure, the algorithms, once sufficiently advanced, could probably trick us into
thinking that certain examples of generative music were made by a person and
then later reveal its algorithmic origin to prove that "the humans are stupid"
and "the google algorithms are clever" but what are we actually proving here?

Can a computer devise new artistic forms that have some genuine impact on
people - can a computer come up with Bacon's Triptych of George Dyer outside
of regurgitating fragments of what it already has seen? What do we get out of
a computer aping the alcohol-fuelled sweaty anarchic performances of The Black
Lips?

The interesting stuff will be to see if this goes to other places that music
has not yet gone - some new composition method - manipulation of frequency in
ways that humans have not yet devised.

~~~
alive2007
I see this sort of application having a lot of use in the kinds of derivative
pop music developed by ensembles of songwriters and manufactured purely to
generate radio hits. Bacon's Triptych of George Dyer is genius. The average
person listening to Taylor Swift just does _not_ care about Bacon's Triptych
of George Dyer.

In a way, Magenta's job is not besting Bach. By the definition of Bach (a
human being who changes the way we view and enjoy music), a non-human being
cannot best Bach. Magenta's job is besting a much simpler, if equally
challenging role - Max Martin, or the writers of "Let it Go".

As it turns out, this kind of music is already pretty formulaic. Much has been
written on repetitive chord progressions being spammed across hundreds of
famous singles. In a way, artists shouldn't fear the potential of these
technologies besting them - they should thank them.

Freed now are artists from loading their albums with eye-rollingly generic
lead singles that they immediately get sick of ("Stairway to Heaven", "Creep",
"Smells Like Teen Spirit") because record labels know that's what will get the
most radio play. You can just let the machine do those. Now, an artists'
reputation is determined purely by his relative mettle against other human
artists.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
The average person listening to Taylor Swift is thinking about Taylor Swift,
and not what they're listening to.

Pop is maybe 75% performance, sex, status, and charisma. The music isn't
irrelevant, but it only really needs to be a committee-produced mashup of
contemporary cliches to do its job.

The rest is posing and attitude.

>As it turns out, this kind of music is already pretty formulaic.

But it's less formulaic than it sounds. Discovering that it uses Standard
Chord Sequence Number 7 (from the small standard pop set) won't get you close
to an interesting song.

A lot of creative detail goes into the production, arrangement, and the vocal
performance. Not the MIDI file.

Basically there are huge gaps between a MIDI cliche machine - buildable now,
and not particularly difficult - to a full virtual artist who produces even
moderately successful tracks without human help, to a musical AI genius who
produces completely new musical styles that capture the human imagination for
centuries.

You need a model of mind to do that last one, and we're at least 50 to 100
years away from that.

~~~
nkozyra
> The average person listening to Taylor Swift is thinking about Taylor Swift,
> and not what they're listening to.

I think this is a grand oversimplification. Personality certainly
_contributes_ to pop stardom, but the music is still #1. Before anyone knew
who Taylor Swift was, they connected with her through one or more song.

> A lot of creative detail goes into the production, arrangement, and the
> vocal performance. Not the MIDI file.

Of course, but even having an autonomous "songwriter" that could write _a_ hit
would be a gamechanger for music (though obviously most immediately applicable
to top 40 / pop)

> You need a model of mind to do that last one

I disagree. Machines already produce what would otherwise be considered
"experimental" music, you just need some deep reinforcement learning to know
what has mass appeal.

~~~
sangnoir
> Before anyone knew who Taylor Swift was, they connected with her through one
> or more song.

Only if by 'connected with her' you mean heard her debut hit over and over and
over again on radio until it became an earworm.

------
shams93
The problem is the reliance on midi but it shouldnt be hard to build a
credible house music generator even with midi byt relying in midi music data
for training wont get you something that sounds like a jimi hendrix. But doing
automated dance music makes sense.

~~~
zamalek
> But doing automated dance music makes sense.

This has been done with LSTM[1][2]. Impressively, the NN is generating
waveforms and not MIDI notes - at around 3:50 it even attempts some singing.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VTI1BBLydE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VTI1BBLydE)
[2]:
[https://github.com/MattVitelli/GRUV](https://github.com/MattVitelli/GRUV)

~~~
illumin8
Very cool! I actually think Jazz improvisation would not be very hard to do:

One of the things you realize if you study jazz improvisation deeply, is that
it isn't that random. Someone like Charlie Parker learned over 100 interesting
riffs or patterns, then learned to play them in any key (transposing as
necessary), and when improvising, transposes each into the chord the band is
currently playing, and arranges them in a unique and interesting order.

Indeed, this is why many great Jazz musicians learn to improvise by
transcribing solos of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, etc, and learning their
riffs in every possible key. Transposing is one of the best possible ways to
learn to improvise, because it teaches you to listen and hear notes, as well
as the patterns/riffs that everyone copies from each other.

There is even a great book called "Patterns for Jazz" that captures many of
the most powerful riffs used by these musicians.

The really interesting thing about this is while most of the listening public
assumes jazz is pure improvisation, much of it is copied riffs just rearranged
in unique and interesting ways. I don't mean to detract from it; jazz is still
a great musical style, but like all styles results from derivatives of
previous works.

edit: grammar

------
julianpye
Keyboards have been popping out automatic C-maj, A-min, F-maj, G-maj
progressions for fourty years now. And with the typical toolset for electronic
music, it will be easily capable to create something similar.

But the masterpieces of music demand something altogether different.
Beethoven's break with consistency by switching keys in the adagio of the 5th
piano concerto. Wagner introducing the Tristan chord, Berg using C-major only
as a joke in Lulu, when the word money is mentioned.

Add to that ingenuity the personal drama behind music. Bach's crisis of faith
leading to 'What God does is well done' to Mahler losing so many of his
children that he composed the Kindertotenlieder ("Songs on the Death of
Children") to the origins of a simple pop song such as 'Tears in heaven' that
moves people tremendously... Music is shaped by our biological life cycle, not
by that of a computer program.

~~~
aclissold
Regarding Kindertotenlieder, he didn't actually lose any children until
_after_ he wrote it. Quoth Wikipedia [0]:

“I placed myself in the situation that a child of mine had died. When I really
lost my daughter, I could not have written these songs any more.”

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindertotenlieder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindertotenlieder)

~~~
davedx
Wow, those poems are wrenching, even in translated form. They really are an
open door to somebody's personal grief.

~~~
eru
Have a look at the Todesfuge: eg
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVwLqEHDCQE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVwLqEHDCQE)
or [http://www.celan-projekt.de/todesfuge-deutsch.html](http://www.celan-
projekt.de/todesfuge-deutsch.html) and
[http://poemsintranslation.blogspot.com.au/2010/01/paul-
celan...](http://poemsintranslation.blogspot.com.au/2010/01/paul-celan-death-
fugue-from-german.html) (the translation doesn't seem nearly as wrenching as
the German to me, though).

Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland.

------
danvoell
I thought that music and art would be what we were doing when there were no
jobs left, hopefully nobody creates an AI bot that travels for us :)

------
ssalazar
The more interesting application of this IMO is not replacing current
popular/practicing musicians and artists but enabling non-professionals who
have some musical inclination but limited time/skill/etc. Imagine a
synthesizer for dance music with knobs for high level parameters like "grimy-
ness" or "shine." Rather than auto generate a complete song with no user
input, semantic control could be offered using learned models, allowing a
rewarding experience with musical creativity without having to spend a lot of
time learning the technical intricacies of these semantics.

~~~
6stringmerc
Many of the tools you describe are already out in the field. Ableton Live and
MAX4LIVE really opens up whole new sectors of tools for those who might be
interested. There is a learning curve for music making software though, and it
can be rather steep. That said, Instant Haus [1] does sort of what you
describe, though it is targeted more for practicing musicians. I'm a fan of
GarageBand's "Drummer" as well.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoIcewM8sKY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoIcewM8sKY)

------
zitterbewegung
If AI generated music works out and becomes popular will people actually
optimize for quality of music or instead you would have an Engineering team
design the next Pop star which would be optimizing for Profitability and
marketability.

~~~
samfisher83
Pop stars are already engineered. You have guys like stargate, dr. luke, etc.

------
samfisher83
They can just program the AI to use the 4 chords most pop songs already use?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpB_40hYjXU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpB_40hYjXU)

------
wslh
Now I see the scifi story: a disruptive future where culture is created by
computers so Google doesn't need to pay any creator in YouTube.

~~~
Razengan
AI celebrities with distinctive personalities will be fun. I can't wait to see
a real-life (as it were) Hatsune Miku making her own content.

EDIT: And then the inevitable schism among fans about what their base
personalities should have been like, and the resulting clones, throwing the
AIs into an existential crisis when confronted with their alternative
versions..

------
tunesmith
There's music and then there's music. I'm glad they are at least thinking
about long narrative structures.

Ultimately I don't think this is a very worthwhile because I personally
believe the entire definition of art and music is a production that is
filtered through the human experience. The same piece of music would mean more
to me coming from a human than from an AI or program. If someone told me it
was from a human and then later told me it actually came from an AI, it
wouldn't really accomplish anything deep; it'd just make me feel tricked.

~~~
vintermann
Well, look at it this way: The AI is really not so different from us in
intelligence (although presently dumber), but it's different in motivation.
It's has only one single "desire", namely to understand you and write music
that connects with you. It's not trying to fool you, it's trying to understand
the human experience itself, and tell back to you what it is seeing.

Isn't it OK to let ourselves be moved by its love letters to humanity?

Every Monday, there are hundreds of tweets from Spotify users who declare that
the Discover Weekly algorithm understands them better than anyone, that they
want to marry it etc. (This is a remarkable testament to neural network AIs.
Not many people want to marry Netflix or Amazon's recommender system, to put
it like that!)

Of course that only finds music for you, it doesn't create it from scratch.
But given the immense size of the library it searches through, that's
impressive enough that many really get the feeling that it knows you,
understands you. I hope generative algorithms will be that good one day, and I
won't waste time worrying that it's fake once they are.

~~~
cdubzzz
That's an interesting thought. I have no idea how complicated this is, but I
wonder if a Spotify or Pandora has a chance to some day develop something that
can _generate_ music tuned specifically to the listening habits of individual
users.

------
larme
If their view of music is a sequence of notes (in midi) then the product won't
be very interesting. In a lot of modern music genre sound design is as
important as composing the note sequence.

------
meggar
For the generation part, it might be a good idea to separate "music" into its
parts (like bass, drums, melody, chord-rhythm, chord-ambient-background, and
other stuff like secondary melodies, horn section arrangements or whatever). A
unique model for each one of those could learn differently. Each of those
parts could be broken down even further too.

------
6stringmerc
Strange, the article doesn't link to the output:

[https://cdn2.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6577761/G...](https://cdn2.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6577761/Google_-_Magenta_music_sample.0.mp3)

I had a listen yesterday. It's okay. Nothing revolutionary. Competent though.

~~~
maroonblazer
Sounds like something you'd hear as a soundtrack to an ad for a computing
device.

~~~
6stringmerc
Yeah it's not too far off from what a generally smart music algorithm would
crank out. I get that it's a different approach though.

I think it's funny they added drums to make it a bit more listenable, because
otherwise I think people would generally tune out after about 1/3 of the tune
because it's okay but not really engaging.

------
simplexion
I can't wait for the AI pop charts!

------
annalewiss
Evaluating the output of generative models is deceivingly difficult.

~~~
hyperbovine
Quantitatively evaluating them, yes. _Qualitatively_ , they all tend to suck
;-) For art and music anyways.

------
kuschku
This sounds like a trademark lawsuit waiting to happen.

T-Mobile holds the trademarks for T-anything, Magenta, the color Magenta, etc
for not just communication and networking, but also music etc.

------
zer00eyz
This is interesting, but it feels a lot like a moonshot, and it isn't even
groundbreaking. The approach may be novel but folks have been trying this for
a while
[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2010/05/ill_be_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2010/05/ill_be_bach.html)

Can code generate a catchy pop tune? Im sure it can. Would I qualify it as
music? Probably not.

Music can pull from sources that are EXTERNAL to the music: Heres a modern
track that does just such a thing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvtNS6hbVy4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvtNS6hbVy4)

Music can have some very non traditional structure that most would qualify as
"noise"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYaWND9n9h0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYaWND9n9h0)

Hell music can even be "silent"
[http://rosewhitemusic.com/piano/writings/silence-taught-
john...](http://rosewhitemusic.com/piano/writings/silence-taught-john-cage/)

Ultimately, I think that it is possible for a machine to generate music, but
were going to be talking about something that is more or less an AI at that
point, after all music has a soul.

~~~
philhartmanonic
I don't know about that. The whole idea of "having a soul" is so nebulous that
it's hard to build a view on top of it. Do we have souls? If yes, is it
possible to mechanically replicate a soul? If not, why not? What's a soul?

If instead you define art as the communication of things that can't be fully
expressed by direct sterile language, that's something I can get behind. Going
that route, I think that getting AI to create real art has some pretty clear
challenges, but there are also ways whers I could see it being better than
humans.

Depending on how the AI learns and analyzes it has a chance to have a unique
perspective on human communication. From there, it can find new and innovative
ways of identifying gaps between primal human experiences and sterile human
communication - and with a unique understanding of human communication could
come up with fascinating ways of bridging those gaps.

This is all spitballing, but I think AI could eventually be the main new
frontier in art.

~~~
soundwave106
That statement "music has soul" to me merely characterizes the emotional
attachment that people put on music. I'm not sure how that could be 100%
programmed or machine-learned at this time.

That being said, musicians have been creating machine-assisted composition
(sequencer driven, stochastic, etc.) for a long time. I can imagine great art
coming from AI, _if_ the composer is there to help "guide the AI tool" in the
direction he or she wants. AI as a means to an end, I don't see greatness from
that... AI as an instrument, that could be very interesting...

~~~
ffwd
Without sounding too nerdy - music doesn't have soul, brains apply the
"soulful" property inside itself to aesthetic signals where it makes sense to
do so. Music like all other sensory stimuli is purely aesthetic and lacks
depth, it's the brain that connects the dots and fabricates the story, and in
that sense an AI's output can have many different possible stories. Personally
I really like artificial and alien music and art, and it can for example make
us more aware of peoples place in the universe and our environment and the
future, and connect the brain to novel atmospheres and ideas. This notion of a
guy playing a guitar being the only thing that's music is very outdated to me
and not interesting at all.

And yes - musicians use accidents both digitally but even in the acoustic
world all the time, that suddenly makes for interesting listening. Music has
never been 100% human.

And the last point is if you want computers to be able to fabricate the
stories themselves, and maybe create output that tells or "exploits" such a
story, then yes maybe it isn't a human story, or maybe they can emulate our
story, but in the end we come down to what is consciousness, what is
intelligence, and all of this. But if intelligence can be artificial similar
to humans, then AI's can in theory create vast and amazingly intricate stories
that would be even more fascinating than what a human could come up with.

