Shoulders Of Giants

This post follows on somewhat from the previous post on AI creativity, where Cope’s creation explicitly utilises work by other artists as the basis for its own work. However – and perhaps why Emily is causing such a reaction – this is fundamentally the same approach that most (if not all) human artists take.

The concept of originality in art is often bandied about, yet it has no clear definition – and it is always possible, whether we’re talking about Michelangelo or Hot Chip, to identify multiple aspects of any artwork that are similar to previous work.

I Fought The Law

As such, we must be very careful about applying legal restraints to artistic endeavour. The argument that copyright is designed to protect intellectual property is a deceptively compelling one, as this is in itself a noble ideal. However, cumbersome and inappropriate copyright laws can throttle creativity, which would be all the more disturbing when we consider that the works they purport to protect are themselves based on prior material.

This short animation by Nina Paley is designed to illustrate just that – and nobody could argue that, although this work is clearly created by copying other artists’ work, it is not a completely new and valuable creation.

Get With The Program

Emily Howell is not your average composer. In fact, she is a computer program designed by Dave Cope, himself a composer who encountered a particularly strident bout of writer’s block in the early 1980s. To overcome it, he decided to turn to his computer for help.

His original creation used pattern analysis to implement what became known as algorithmic composition – essentially studying the vast corpus of classical music, figuring out how it was all put together, and then using the underlying fundaments to generate new variations. The original program was called Emmy (or EMI, Experiments in Musical Intelligence). This year, the new and improved version, Emily Howell, is about to take the world by storm – you can listen to some of her work here.

Turing Fork

Although some of Emmy’s output was indistinguishable from human compositions – and in fact, at a live performance, most of the audience couldn’t tell the difference between Emmy’s ‘imitation’ Bach chorals and the actual Bach work – she was never accepted by the music community.

Essential to Cope’s approach – which is certainly remarkable in the field of AI, as well as that of music – is the notion that recombination is essential to creativity. According to him:

“Nobody’s original…We are what we eat, and in music, we are what we hear. What we do is look through history and listen to music. Everybody copies from everybody. The skill is in how large a fragment you choose to copy and how elegantly you can put them together.”

The idea that great music can be created by a machine is clearly anathema to many people, as they feel it somehow devalues the spiritual aspect of human artistic endeavour.

However, it has always been the case that another person may create a song that is deeply moving, but this does not prevent you from creating a different song that is also deeply moving, an expression of your own individuality. There will always be variations – even if you had written that song a week later, it would have been slightly different.

The fact that a computer can create moving music does not impinge upon our own ability to create moving music; nor does it detract from the individuality of expression thereby revealed.

A computer could simulate a thousand monkeys typing at a thousand typewriters, and perhaps eventually it would generate ‘A Tale Of Two Cities’. Perhaps any artistic creation can be eventually uncovered through algorithmic means; but the practical infinity of variables that contribute to each human artwork make it vanishingly unlikely this would ever happen. So keep writing those songs…

Mixing It Up

I’ve previously covered some interesting angles on synaesthesia, a condition whereby the senses intermingle, often in very powerful (and possibly confusing) ways.

There are actually a number of ways of converting images to sound, but for the sake of speed I used Nicolas Fournel’s Audiopaint to do the job. This is very easy to use, and although you can tweak a few parameters, basically all you have to do is feed it an image and press go.

Play My Website

Sean at Key of Grey pointed out another musical converter – but this one converts websites into music.

As with Audiopaint, your results may vary wildly in musicality, but it’s all good fun… check it out at the code organ site.

A Striking Argument

As ISPs are being ‘encouraged’ to adopt a three-strikes policy to cut off Internet access to people suspected of illegally downloading or sharing copyrighted content, the obvious issue is how do we actually identify such content, and those who are downloading it. There is a significant difference between an IP address and a person, and cutting off someone’s Internet access without legal due process is a worrying prospect.

In any case, copyright is rarely a black and white issue – as illustrated by Viacom’s rather farcical lawsuit against Google, where about 100 of the music videos in question were actually uploaded to YouTube by Viacom themselves. More recently, we have stories of music blogs being forced to take down media that were actually approved and sent to them by the same company.

OK GO – Stop That

Another example of ‘not getting it’ is the way OK Go’s new corporate management refuses to allow embedding of their videos. OK Go are a band who made their breakthrough on the back of a simple, cheap and clever YouTube video that went viral – and yet now they have ‘made it’, they are no longer allowed to do the things that worked for them in the first place.

The band themselves posted an open letter describing their displeasure with this new policy, and it’s an interesting insight into the current state of (some of) the industry…

The Meeting Of Art And Commerce

photo credit: dwhartwig

This discussion may seem to be somewhat at odds with the previous post regarding creating an album in a month with the RPM Challenge – but, although I can’t recommend the challenge highly enough, it is purely an artistic endeavour.

When it comes to sales and promotion, the trends and technologies of consumption must be considered. Understanding the needs and desires of the audience is key to running a successful business, and if you want to make a living from music, however modest, then you have to treat it as a business.

Music Technology Shapes Music

In the early days of recorded music and radio, singles were the driving force behind the industry. When the vinyl LP was introduced, artists began to produce collections of songs that were roughly 40-45 minutes in duration, simply because a record could only successfully reproduce about 20 minutes per side.

This was the template for ‘the album’, but the duration was determined primarily by the technological limitations of the medium. When the CD was introduced, artists were free to create albums of 70-80 minutes on one disc, and now that the physical medium has been made redundant altogether, artists can create albums that go on for months if they so choose.

Less Is More

So, perhaps ironically, we are now back where we started – the digital single is now becoming the most important source of revenue in terms of actual music products.

This interview with Tom Silverman over at MusicianCoaching provides plenty of insights into the state of commercial music.

Soundscan reveals that last year overall music sales are actually up 2.1%. Within that, all album sales (physical and digital) were down 12.7%, but individual track downloads increased by 8.3%.

Living The Single Life

So people are embracing the song-by-song a la carte music consumption model. It’s always been the case that a single song could break an act or propel it into the mainstream, but this is probably becoming even more important again… to the extent that artists (at least, those with revenue goals) should probably try to focus on creating great songs (or even one great song) rather than great albums.

I previously considered taking this strategy to the next level of brevity – creating a preview clip of a song that is designed to lure the listener to the ‘buy now’ button, as detailed in this post on thirty-second songs.

But this is something to move on to once you’ve finished your RPM album, of course…