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Resurrecting Performers Via Computer Performance
putko writes "The NYT has an article entitled 'Play It Again, Vladimir (via Computer)' that discusses efforts to transform old recordings into new, computer played performances (reg. required), by determining how the previous performer made the sounds and redoing it. Further efforts attempt to distill the 'style' of a performer and play other scores with the same style. As can be expected, musicologists argue over whether or not the new musical artifact is really 'a performance'. Philip K. Dick would be proud."
Ask a piano player if a digital piano is a passable substitute. Yes it's pretty damn good... but still not the same...
Yeah but can it do hardcore gangster rap?
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This displays the power of modern computing. To be able to "replicate" a song by replicating human thought processes shows that, finally, there is a balance between fast systems, and complex software available to utilise them. After all, what use is a 10Ghz 512-bit 3Ghz FSB 1GB video RAM 10GB RAM machine - when you're running Word? Complex simulation programs are the way of the future.
I am a musician, and I have heard these things in person. For performances recorded directly on a Disklavier, the recording is indistinguishable from the original to my ears (and to every other musiciain I have talked to about this). If the technique in the article is indeed accurate, then this could mean great things. However, as the article mentioned, it is much more difficult to determine when the notes stop sounding, and pedalling, than the attacks. There is the interesting question of copyright: for ancient recordings ressurrected, who owns what? and is it possible to just tweak a few notes and then do what you want with the thing? (remember, the piece, and the recording are P.D.)
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Yamaha has done this with their Disklavier player pianos, so that you can listen to an artists song as the artist actually played it.
It is neat to look at a nice grand piano playing, without anyone sitting at it, keys moving and everything, knowing that if Gershwin were here to play it himself, it would sound just the same.
That, personally, had far more of an impact than just hearing the same piano play the same song.
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I can't send you to a paper that specifically mirrors my description, but if you pick up just about any journal in the cognitive, behavioral, or social sciences and read half of it, you'll find that it's generally in keeping with our basic understanding of human interaction: part of what we find so impressive about face-to-face interaction or performances are the millions of subtle clues that aren't at all verbal but that nonetheless impart information.
For this information to be meaningful, however (and thus moving, or interesting), there must be a shared awareness of context and a reasonably compatible match between enculturation and/or conceptual frameworks for meaning-making.
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I think your line of reasoning is incorrect. The fact that a CD recording of music by an actual human performer is recogniseable as that specific performer by a knowledgeable music buff(despite the fact that the surrounding environment and atmosphere of the perfornce is unkown by the listener) is proof against your assertions. The music buff would pick that the recording was a human and a specific human at that.
The fact that a music buff can pick characteristic signs of who the performer is(despite the performers surrounding environment and atmopshere at the time of the recording), shows that it is the performer themselves, and not the surrounding cirucmstances that contains these idiosyncratic performance styles. Further it shows that these deviations from the "ideal" recreation of a piece of music, are in fact repetitive. This is why a computer can then derive these idiosyncrative deviations from the ideal, forumulate them into rules and apply them to new music.
As an aside: do you really think that the fact that the performers daughter is ill will be formed into some sort of shared communication in the form of 2ms delay in the attack of the 23rd note and a 30ms extra decay in the 54th note? I highly doubt it. In very broad ways it may be possible to pick up a "vibe" of a performance but I highly doubt that altering the timing of notes by a few ms would lead to anything beyond very vague emotional undercurrents being added to the music, even to the performers most intimate and close friends.
I am not dismissing the "vague emotional undercurrents" at all, rather pointing out the vagueness of the communication that is taking place, as opposed to the very specific communications you seemed to be asserting were possible such as "my daughter is ill." Remember we're talking about the recreation/replaying of a pre-defined/written piece of art, not the creation of art, which means that there is far less room for the personal expression of the artist.
Here is a pretty cool article on a similar project, but from the software development point of view.
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