Articificial classical music composer: Emily Howell
25 October 2009“Emily Howell” is a computer programme created by David Cope, a professor of the University of California – Santa Cruz. Emily – named after Experiments in Musical Intelligence – makes classical music. Initially, Cope had her learn and emulate the style of the great classical composers. Now he’s made her come up with original bits.
Mark Lawson at the Guardian, along with others, thinks that artificially-created music will never have the “soul” of human-created music, and implies that it’ll never reach us in the same way.
I think I disagree. It’s very early days for computer-generated music. And if you’re a materialist – like me – then you probably think that the brain is only a biochemical computer anyway. There’s no reason why an electronic brain couldn’t experience and consolidate and reflect and create just like a biochemical one does.
Listen to some of Emily’s earlier compositions and see what you think.Her first full album, From Darkness, Light, is due out next spring.
mark lawson needs to rethink that statement. Technology is advancing at such an incredible rate, that some scientists believe a singularity is about to happen within the next few decades. Singularity= the moment when machines become so advanced that they start making machines smarter than themselves, and far beyond any human ability. Artificial Intelligence is a part of the singularity theory… My point is that Machines will one day be far more intelligent than human kind, and could therefore understand humans better than we understand ourselves… Who is to say that an AI created with music as its basic program couldn’t create music with such depth that it could touch humans? Music is really just math… the differences in the pitches, the way the notes harmonize… its all math when you step back at it. Waves…. Sound waves is all music physically is. An AI could theoretically absorb every nuance in our music, and build upon it… who knows… AI could create a whole new genre of music, beyond human comprehension… This is all theory, but… it stands rooted in a very real and very possible theory.