Artificial Intelligence that makes dubstep

[arktrix45hz]

The problem with progamming an AI to do music is that music is culture and culture is anything produced by human beings that is not result of humanity itself (a turd produced by you is not culture, give up). Therefore, what it produced wouldn't be music but organized sounds.

LOL of the highest calibre.

What is music, if not sounds that have been organised in an ear pleasing way?

[Salfa]

Quick question, are you a genious?

Haha thanks! It's flattering :p programming is my favorite thing to do ever. And making dubstep is number 2. So I decided to combine both! a lot of programmers are not creative, and need creative people to direct them. I would say that I am creative also! And have good ideas. Knowing this, I believe there is no limit to what you can do with skills. So I love to push myself to the extreme, by doing projects that seem very improbable, and difficult. In the end, I come out smarter then I went into the project, and I have done something almost no one else has attempted. It's all worth it.

[BonerJams04]

Quick question, are you a genious?

Haha thanks! It's flattering :p programming is my favorite thing to do ever. And making dubstep is number 2. So I decided to combine both! a lot of programmers are not creative, and need creative people to direct them. I would say that I am creative also! And have good ideas. Knowing this, I believe there is no limit to what you can do with skills. So I love to push myself to the extreme, by doing projects that seem very improbable, and difficult. In the end, I come out smarter then I went into the project, and I have done something almost no one else has attempted. It's all worth it.

I wish i was motivated.

[Today]

you are super intelligent and most definitely creative, and i'm sure you do have good ideas. But nobody has ONLy good ideas.
to be frank, i think telling a computer to build your track is probably one of your goose eggs. It would be a benchmarking feat for you personally to accomplish, but would not likely result in a sound recording that resembles anything good about the as-of-yet human-exclusive art of arranging music.

[fractal]

i say keep at it. even if the music lacks, the technology is awesome! think about it. what if i could load up my favorite movies, tunes, samples, stems, etc, and just push go and let the comp go wild as i chill with a L or two... kudos to the OP

[Shum]

...the as-of-yet human-exclusive art of arranging music.

There's plenty of algorithmic music out there and let's forget the sounds of nature.

[Hircine]

The problem with progamming an AI to do music is that music is culture and culture is anything produced by human beings that is not result of humanity itself (a turd produced by you is not culture, give up). Therefore, what it produced wouldn't be music but organized sounds.

LOL of the highest calibre.

What is music, if not sounds that have been organised in an ear pleasing way?

Like I said, my statement was based on the anthropologic concept of culture production. A scientific point of view, with no relation the common sense concept of what music may be. Also I strongly disagree, there's music that is disorganised and unpleasant to the ear and yet the person who composed may call it music. There's more to music than just sound and structure.

[Salfa]

you are super intelligent and most definitely creative, and i'm sure you do have good ideas. But nobody has ONLy good ideas.
to be frank, i think telling a computer to build your track is probably one of your goose eggs. It would be a benchmarking feat for you personally to accomplish, but would not likely result in a sound recording that resembles anything good about the as-of-yet human-exclusive art of arranging music.

No I'm not expecting this to go anywhere musically, I hope it goes places in the programming field though. I'm only doing it to improve my own, and other's knowledge of ai and similar things. Even if you think it's a waste of
Time, it doesn't matter. I'm only 17, therefor I can waste my time doing things like this because I don't need to work and support myself. I'm not expecting recording companies to use it. And I wouldn't let them. Because I personally wouldn't believe in selling the music created. Only giving it away for free. Now hopefully what people take out of this is a better understanding of humans and how we make things creatively.

[cosmic_surgeon]

The problem with progamming an AI to do music is that music is culture and culture is anything produced by human beings that is not result of humanity itself (a turd produced by you is not culture, give up). Therefore, what it produced wouldn't be music but organized sounds.

it's an interesting debate, but i'd disagree with you on this... if it was sounds organized by an animal for instance it wouldn't be the same, but in this case, the AI is designed by a human in order to do music, so in the end, the process still begins with human intention, which is the basis of Art. It's basically the same as generative music (or even aleatoric music, in a sense), only pushed further as you create a program which will act a certain way in order to write music... the program has still been designed by a human, it is not just any computer deciding all of a sudden to write music.

Wrote an essay on this recently:

http://www.theeverlastingguest.blogspot ... ivity.html

[Salfa]

Interesting read cosmic surgeon. I think personally until we discover what consciousness is and try to apply it to computing, many of these questions can't be answered, but only hypothisised.

[Regret]

Interested to see how this turns out.

[frizzwah]

sounds decent!
used max msp for a module in my 3rd year of uni to create generative music, albeit nowhere near the scale of what you're doing.
doing a masters in audio programming next year, any chance you could point me in the direction of some learning resources op?
want to get a bit of a head start on the course, already got a bit of knowledge on c++ and general programming principals (and obviously max).
looking forward to seeing how yr project turns out.

[cosmic_surgeon]

Interesting read cosmic surgeon. I think personally until we discover what consciousness is and try to apply it to computing, many of these questions can't be answered, but only hypothisised.

Cheers for reading! Though the point Heidegger made was that consciousness isn't the essential characteristic of human intelligence. That we are concernful beings is more fundamental than our consciousness because we are always in some way concerned with something (even resting is only intelligible as a break from activity) but not always conscious of the things we're concerned with. If you look, we generally only become conscious when there is a breakdown in our activity (the door-handle sticks, the computer blue-screens, the car breaks down, or we simply complete what it is we were doing). Most of the time we're getting by without having to become conscious of what's going on at all.

The cognitivist explanation (that we're making use of unconscious mental processes to perform those tasks) needs to account for how non-conscious actions are performed far quicker than consciously thought-out ones. If conscious or unconscious mental processes explain all actions, why are unconscious mental processes so much faster? The non-cognitivist doesn't have to answer that question - they're much faster because they're not mental processes at all. Neural dispositions are simply enacted without one having to think about anything (like when you step out in front of a car and insta-bail, or when you're walking, or holding a conversation).

If Heidegger's account is correct then it is not consciousness that we must try to understand but rather how it is that things come to matter to us.

[Salfa]

sounds decent!
used max msp for a module in my 3rd year of uni to create generative music, albeit nowhere near the scale of what you're doing.
doing a masters in audio programming next year, any chance you could point me in the direction of some learning resources op?
want to get a bit of a head start on the course, already got a bit of knowledge on c++ and general programming principals (and obviously max).
looking forward to seeing how yr project turns out.

Max MSP, I have never heard of it so I decided to search it up. It is a very powerful program, that is simple to use in audio synthesis. I'm guessing when you say audio programming you mean audio synthesis? Okay I don't know much about audio synthesis. But I know a few things, if you developing .wav files, that format was created by Microsoft. Although it cannot run on mac, I believe the easiest way to program it is using a language called c#. You cannot program with c# on mac, so if your looking to make Mac audio programming, use c++ or maybe objective-c, or java.

Since many different languages can do what you want to learn, I would probably look into all of them.

I'm not sure if you have seen example code of next year's course, but this is what c# would look like.

Code: Select all

   public WaveGenerator(WaveExampleType type)
 {          
    // Init chunks
    header = new WaveHeader();
    format = new WaveFormatChunk();
    data = new WaveDataChunk();            

   // Fill the data array with sample data
    switch (type)
     {
        case WaveExampleType.ExampleSineWave:
 
             // Number of samples = sample rate * channels * bytes per sample
            uint numSamples = format.dwSamplesPerSec * format.wChannels;
           
            // Initialize the 16-bit array
             data.shortArray = new short[numSamples];
  
              int amplitude = 32760;  // Max amplitude for 16-bit audio
           double freq = 440.0f;   // Concert A: 440Hz
  
            // The "angle" used in the function, adjusted for the number of channels and sample rate.
             // This value is like the period of the wave.
            double t = (Math.PI * 2 * freq) / (format.dwSamplesPerSec * format.wChannels);
  
             for (uint i = 0; i < numSamples - 1; i++)
             {
                 // Fill with a simple sine wave at max amplitude
                 for (int channel = 0; channel < format.wChannels; channel++)
                 {
                    data.shortArray[i + channel] = Convert.ToInt16(amplitude * Math.Sin(t * i));
                }                        
            }
  
             // Calculate data chunk size in bytes
             data.dwChunkSize = (uint)(data.shortArray.Length * (format.wBitsPerSample / 8));
   
             break;
      }          
   }

That actually won't do anything without the other source files, but it's just an example. I would definitally take a look into that language. I actually got that snippet of code from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dawate/archive/ ... ing-c.aspx

but also look into java, which is what i'm using to program the ai i'm building. By the way for anyone that is interested, so far my ai is 216 lines long. Once I finish it, I am going to translate it to objective-c and start using audio synthesis to build the songs, so I can put it on my iphone.

[frizzwah]

yeh, from what i can tell it can be integrated quite well into ableton.

lifted this from the description of the course:

Explore the most advanced studio techniques, technologies and processes at the forefront of current music production
Unleash your creative potential and cultivate your own individual style to produce original arrangements, mixes, re-mixes and mastering work
Deliver comprehensive solutions and support for live sound in a variety of performance settings
Create your own A/V interfaces, plug-ins, and programming codes

it seems to be pretty focused around max, java and c++ rather than c# so i'm trying to get my head around them at the moment (but i'll still take a look at c#).
the link you've provided seems to be along the lines of what i'm looking for, cheers for that!
found a couple of books on amazon which seem to be spot on too, the big plan is to work within game audio.

anyway i feel like i'm detracting from the thread and your project so i'll leave it there, ta for the reply though.

[Salfa]

No problem frizzwah. Quick question (to anyone), does anyone have any knowledge on Chord progression in music theory, like the rules behind it? Like what comes best after an A chord in the key of C, so on and so forth. If anyone has any information on that, it would be great!

[fractal]

.wav's can't be played on a mac? that's not even close to true my friend
edit: ah, you mean programming on c#

i do program on my mac, but i use bootcamp>windows7ult>visual studio 2010

either way...

[frizzwah]

No problem frizzwah. Quick question (to anyone), does anyone have any knowledge on Chord progression in music theory, like the rules behind it? Like what comes best after an A chord in the key of C, so on and so forth. If anyone has any information on that, it would be great!

maybe you could make a set of rules based on the second half of this?
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/m ... compo.html
(i say the second half as you'll probably want to stick to minor keys when making dubstep)

[frizzwah]

if you don't have any knowledge on chord symbols/keys/etc i'll dig up some links in a bit(posting from iphone at the moment but i'm sure i have a good primer bookmarked on my laptop from way back).

[Salfa]

if you don't have any knowledge on chord symbols/keys/etc i'll dig up some links in a bit(posting from iphone at the moment but i'm sure i have a good primer bookmarked on my laptop from way back).

It's not that I have no knowledge on it. I mean I know what notes as chords are, and I know what sounds good and what doesn't. But I don't know the rules, like I can't know off the top of my head on what sounds best after a c chord. So usually I just (when I make my music) do trial and error until I find a combination I like. Obviously my ai can't listen back to what it makes, so it's going to need to know what the different notes it can use are before hand. Otherwise known as music theory.



EDIT: symbol wise I don't know what the I, and iV etc means, but I know key structure of the chords. That link you found me is absolutely perfect btw! That helps so much! This will make life much easier when programming it.