Music Created by Learning Computer Is Impressive

[nswanberg]

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

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1137194...

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.

[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?

[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.

[mleonhard]

The download links are asking for a password.

[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

[tpyo]

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

[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.

[andreyf]

Having played a lot of Bach when studied piano, I recognized a lot of parts sounding exactly like his pieces.

[bkovitz]

More than subtly.

[wallflower]

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

http://tones.wolfram.com/

[biohacker42]

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