Archive for the ‘ephemera’ tag
I am hell of late with this one, but:
Programmer Writes Software to Replace Tonal Composers, Hurts Everyone’s Feelings
There are a few dramatic oversimplifications in this article (it’s probably not written by a musician) and I’m not gonna make the time to read more into it today (it’s 1:30am and I got two writing sessions and a show to catch tomorrow), but it’s a really interesting read. I like the moral of: Tonal music is some clever math, not magic happy-sauce from God. Doesn’t mean it’s not awesome, it’s just not magic.
I also like how people criticize him for his work by calling him the “tin man” – saying basically that it is a heartless act to make an attempt at better understanding the materials we’re working with, and implying that tonal music is sacred and shouldn’t be explained. Lol yr feelings, keep them quartets comin’ FOO!
Apparently he’s been working on a sequel which is supposed to write “modern, original” music. There are a couple pieces posted within that article, although both of them are tonal, solo piano pieces. They do sound pretty, but judging by these his strat is still to write using staves and notes, which isn’t really where it’s been at. Is it really hard to go to the conservatory and pick up some scores?
Anyway I’m rootin’ for him, and I’m hoping he’s digging deeper than notes. But if he manages to come up with AI that writes original, modern music, well, that’s some pretty intense learning goin’ on there. We got bigger problems than ego damage in that case, ha!