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An Experiment in A New Kind of Music
waynegoode writes "Stephen Wolfram's Wolfram Research has produced an new application:
WolframTones-- 'An Experiment in A New Kind of Music'. It combines the principles in Stephen's book, 'A New Kind of Science' and Mathematica to 'instantly create unique music' in many different styles. They describe it as pretty neat as well as being scientifically interesting, and useful. After listening to some compositions and creating a few random ones myself, I must agree that it is. And anyone who has listen to the radio the last few years could certainly use some unique music."
Audiomata++
this sounds rather interesting. hopefully its not a complety failure(in terms of actually being music) like that computer created holiday songs.
I wouldn't trust anything Wolfram says about his creations. He has a tendency to toot his own horn. Constantly. If you've read A New Kind of Science you know exactly what I'm getting at.
Scary, scary idea. A paraphrase from it: 'Composition was once a sort of trance where slightly insane people wrote music down feverishly. Our way, based on mathematics, is much better. Regular, based on curves and graphs.'
It looks pretty neat, but I can't play it because it requires QuickTime. Personal prejudice, I know, but both QT and Real have proven to me in the past that they aren't willing to work and play nicely with others.
Does anyone have a sample saved in wav or mp3 format?
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
More unique (and irritating) ringtones!
Anything specific you can mention? Of course not.
Your post sounds like jealously of an obviously talented genious.
Read the section of ANKoS about the applications of cellular automata. It reads like, "I am the smartest man alive and cellular automata will change the way humans live forever."
Copernicus debunked: The universe actually revolves around Stephen Wolfram's ass.
I'm sorry but as neat as this application is the quality of music is horrible.
As someone that creates music all day long I know that computers will never be able to create music that rivals human made music.
Play around with the application a little and you'll agree with me.
Kraftwerk is gonna be pissed.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
These sound like video game stage music. Maybe it's just the MIDI. But I don't know; I could envision an RPG or Megaman or fighting game to every tone it generated. Maybe someone's job just got a lot easier.
That's the shit that feds me up
I listened to the first few and, at best, they sound like something you'd skip over on a CZ101. Perhaps I should read the hype before commenting but elevator-electronic music has been around since ... [insert Moog (RIP) ref here].
Without anything approaching Steve Reich or any of the techno programmers of the last 20 or so years I don't see why this is interesting. They already have computers that can write music (see: Babyface)
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
I'm afraid I don't have the book with me right now. Besides, it's approximately ten pages and the book is large.
And I never said anything about it being over my head. I'm talking about Wolfram coming off as if he's Jesus. I'm not the only one who has drawn this conclusion. Now begone.
I have to second this opinions. I couldn't find any sort of reference or acknowledgement to previous work on the subject.
Of course, I have a slight bias on the topic as my supervisor did something similar back in 1986.
(P. Prusinkiewicz, Score Generation with L-Systems, International Computer
Music Conference 86 Proceedings, 1986, pp. 455-457.)
** Sig-a-licious **
I forgot to come back and post... until just now...
Thats badass...
Remember the fiasco over the "for dummies" trademarks?
How long before Wolfram & Co. trademarks "A new kind of ________"?
Stupid that such a dumb though also bears legitimacy...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Start here and browse.
In closing I have nothing against the work Wolfram has done. It's the way he treats it that irks me.
This is crap, not music. I could make better music by repeatedly smashing your face into a piano.
A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about
whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments, they
got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, "The
medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's
rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat."
The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the Garden
itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that the Garden
and the world were created. So God must have been an architect."
The computer scientist, who'd listened carefully to all of this, then
commented, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
I'm going back to the radio. I can just fire up an old Nintendo to get this kind of "music"
I'd like to see a game that licenses this thing.
"I staggered back in the dark, without the means of striking a light, crashing against the table, overturning a chair, and finally groping my way to the place where the blackness screamed with shocking music. To save myself and Erich Zann I could at least try, whatever the powers opposed to me. Once I thought some chill thing brushed me, and I screamed, but my scream could not be heard above that hideous viol. Suddenly out of the blackness the madly sawing bow struck me, and I knew I was close to the player. I felt ahead, touched the back of Zann's chair, and then found and shook his shoulder in an effort to bring him to his senses." --H.P. Lovecraft, The Music of Erich Zann
Another thing to look at is Metamath music, which is interesting in a different way. It is the raw, unadorned piano music generated directly by mathematical proofs, very faithful to the actual mathematics.
On pages 7-10:
Physics: "In the future of physics the greatest triumph would undoubtedly be to find a truly fundamental theory for our whole universe. Yet despite occasional optimism, traditional approaches do not make this seem close at hand. But with the methods and intuition I develop in this book there is I believe finally a serious possibility that such a theory can actually be found."
Social Sciences: "...I suspect that one will often have a much better chance of capturing fundamental mechanisms for phenomena in the social sciences by using instead the new kind of science that I develop in this book based on simple programs."
Computer Science: "One consequence [of this book's material] is a dramatic broadening of the domain to which computational ideas can be applied--in particular to include all sorts of fundamental questions about nature and about mathematics."
Philosophy: "But my discoveries in this book lead to radically new intuition. And with this intuition it turns out that one can for the first time began to see resolutions to many longstanding issues..."
There's plenty more where this came from.
It sounds like it's picking a few chords in a key, and then playing notes from them over and over in various random patterns. It's not going to sound bad, exactly, but it's not going to sound good, either. Seriously, go find a piano, and play nothing but C, G, A, and E notes. It's nothing that'll make you wince...the notes will never clash with each other, but that doesn't make it pleasant music.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
This is a pretty neat concept, especially applicable to video games or other things that use MIDIs at the moment. However how easy would it be to get sheet music of this randomly generated music, or of a similar software so that people could test it out with real instruments.
The music from what I've heard has a lot of potential especially if it's got a human with musical knowledge to properly mix it. Are there any other mathematical driven music generators out there?
If Wolfram's confection is indeed an experiment, then it ought to have a falsifiable hypothesis.
Show us the evidence that Wolfram's concoction involves any kind of "experiment."
Crackpots have been churning out music using mathematics for well over 50 years -- but none of this can be described as any kind of "science" or any sort of "experiment." Science involves falsifiable hypotheses...generating music with math involves touchy-feely squishy fuzzy "I like it" or "I don't like it" unfalsifiable subjective personal reactions.
Go ahead. Objectively prove via double blind falsifiable repeatable scientific experiment that a piece of music is good.
You can't. No one can. As Laurent Fichet showed in his 1996 book "Scientific Theories of Music the 19th and 20th Century," every allegedly scientific theory of music over the past 200 years falls apart on examination. It's all vacuous twaddle, nothing more than acoustic gematria. "Mathematical theories of music, based on acoustics, consistently contradict the practice of musicians." -- Paul Hindemith, 1947
Music is an art, not a science. Efforts to scientize the arts are as futile as efforts to mathematically predict the stock market (as the Nobel-induced collapse of Long Term Capital Management proved in 1997). Wolfram is here practicing pseudo-science, and has fallen into a numerological form of superstition no different from biorhythms, ufology, or astrology.
It sounds like the program generates each instrument's part separately, then juxtapositions them with no consideration for how they'd sound together.
This is something a human composer would catch, but a program generally doesn't.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
When it comes down to it, this is a way of interpretting a psuedeo random series of dots in a grid. Saying it's a "new kind of music" is a bit misleading - There's no flow, no beginning, no middle, no end. It's a new way of randomly generating midi note events within certain constraints.
Someone has discovered a unlimited source of muzak! I can sense hordes of senseless HomePage Hobbiests(TM) reaching for their editors...
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
Unfortunately, the law of Computational Equivalence tells us that Mathematica is no better than Maple or Matlab.
This stuff is NOT music. Maybe the chatbots would like listening to this stuff, but I don't think it's ready for human consumption! LOL
No Sigs!
I bought A New Kind Of Science and I've still got it. I read a few pages and went for a swim. Came back and read a few more. Maybe someday I'll finish the darn thing, but here's the catch: his ideas are sound. Forget about the business side of a man trying to get a buck for something he spent 2 decades working on. I saw a video of him explaining the text and it had me convinced and interested. This man knows what makes simple systems tick.
Music is produced according to a marketing formula for the tastes that sell. They know for example that certain melodies and instruments are more marketable to American tastes and which are not. Which is why once a marketable "sound" is found, a genre of similar sounding music played over and over and over follows since companies don't want to take a risk that someone might change the channel and listen to another station. It's simliar with movies as well.
Yes, you can get these as ringtones, for the low low price of only 2 dollar. Something interesting to play with but I dont see it changing the world
Yeah, thats right, I'm creating a bot to click every button, and taking each output, emailing it to myself, and copyrighting it.
I figure in a year or so I should have just about everything either copywritten, or at least something close enough I can sue everyone.
I'm also working at buying the rights to the word "stealth".
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Checkmate.
Anyone remember the work that Eno had done with algorithmic/self generative music and the 'koan' program he co-developed?
I haven't touched one in years, and I still catch myself humming the most random Nintendo tunes.
I don't know which is worse - still being able to hum the tune during the "Game Over" screen from Super Mario Brothers 2, or still knowing that the tune is from SMB2.
Someone needs to invent a miracle pill that clears all this garbage out of our brains, so we can work on a cure for cancer or something else important with the newly-freed space.
- Harmony is very mathematical
Music composition has very little to do with mathematics, and much more to do with patterns. One of the most basic things we do is find patterns in things - even where none exists. Witness the many people playing lottery games who are convinced they've found some "hidden" pattern.Yes, that public belief is true. In order to understand harmony, you must be able to count to twelve. You can perform a scientific experiment at home to determine whether you have the necessary mathematical ability. Just look at a clock or a wrist watch. Can you tell what time it is? If not, then wait for the sequel to this book: How To Tell Time From A Clock and Wristwatch.
Melody is guided by harmonic relationships based on the harmonic series. But a much stronger element is how our short-term memory is limited to being able to only a handful of elements.
Most music (especially pop) plays into this, creating very symetric call and response style phrases based on repeating patterns that make it very easy to code into familiar structures and ideas.
The beauty of this (from an algorithmic composition perspective) is that as long at there's an underlying beat and a hint of periodicity, we'll find "meaningful" patterns in even the most mediocre of music - including computer generated music.
Mathematical approaches are a fun diversion, but pretty much a dead end. Check out the work of David Cope for pattern-based computer composition that actually sounds like music.
My "intuition" after listening to a few of these is that it's an interesting experiment, but please, please people... don't use this music in a production that the general public might ever have to listen to. Create your own ringtone. Listen to your creations in your own home. Listen with headphones on your mp3 player. But DON'T put this drivel in a media production or game. Yuk!
--- Shoo-be-doo-be-do-wop-say-what-yeah!
not!
Your post sounds like jealously of an obviously talented genious.
If you want to assert that you know genius, it would probably be a good first step to spell the word correctly.
... but little else. I listened to a few on the website, and it's way too random for casual listening. From a geek perspective, it's still interesting, but as a music lover, I'm generally not going to listen to something that sounds surprisingly similar to the output of a loop playing random musical notes via the PC speaker. As game music, however, it might be ok... especially for small-scale projects where a talented composer just isn't available. A bit of randomness might make things interesting in that situation, and it might even suit the atmospheres of some games.
A lot of the stuff on the site sounds like old Nintendo music anyway (as other posters also apparently noticed).
This reminds me of a Microsoft program from years ago which let you specify what type of music you wanted, what mood, and so forth, and it would generate a midi file for you based on your settings.
Anyone else remember this?
I smell a Ferrengi! A Melnormé! A used car salesman who used to sell insurance and encyclopedies so boring they were better than sleeping pills! Wolfram strikes again!!
Wolfram creates the new *cough* science *cough* of the week (again)! TuneDeaf-ology! AS SEEN ON TV!
Buy his new *cough* revolutionary *cough* book now!
Operators are standing by, and will be used to substract from your wallet in the order you will be calling. Long-distance charges may apply.
Seriously, the only kind of science Wolfram really mastered is marketing - how to get slashdotted that often while being laughable to most his fellow bad computer music programmers.
When I did the same kind of program in the 80's I deleted my program after running it twice as an act of sanity - unfortunately Wolfram doesn't have the mental equivalent of an eraser.
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
i feel the same way about all my theories... maybe this guy is on to something....
Listen to the BBC radio on the internet, and then please tell there is not much on radio these days. Unfortunately I think the problem has to do with USA radio.
People have been making music based on numbers for hundreds of years. Mozart made up a dice game to create tunes.
This is what WolframTones appears to be: The styles act as some kind of filter because they obviously limit the randomness to fit a certain style. Then a CA contributes some degree of randomness and some degree of repetition (If you compute the entropy of music we judge as pleasant it falls between repetitive and random - more towards repetative). We know that CAs can do this so it is only really clever if the style filters don't have a lot of information built-in.
But the music isn't very good. Certainly Band-in-a-box can do better.
So how is Wolfram different from the other human filth that sell ringtones? Because the music has a mathematical basis? Ass.
I think it was "Instant Music" from Electronic arts, but I can't be sure. I'd have to go into my attic to find the disk... and the Amiga.
Ok, the algorithm might me more sophisticated to generate something less apparently random noise, but I wouldn't rush out to buy the "music" it generates.
This generator concept seems superficially interesting, but lacking in any real depth. I think there is far less going on here than Wolfram implies.
Exactly like A New Kind Of Science actually.
"And anyone who has listen to the radio the last few years could certainly use some unique music."
Actually, there is music beyond what gets played on the radio.
And a lot of it is very, very good.
This, however, is not good.
Reminds me of a less creative version of MetaSynth
He was also an important philosopher, and with his piece 4'33" , he broadened the definition of what is and is not music, just for all you people who are claiming that this stuff "isn't music"
Quite frankly, RTFA. I got sick of his own horn tooting on that site. You'd think that he was the only person that had anything to do with chaos theory and emergent behaviour; although he doesn't use those terms it seems.
m l
"It's a rather direct consequence of a core phenomenon of Stephen Wolfram's science: that programs with very simple underlying rules can generate great complexity of behavior."
http://tones.wolfram.com/about/faqs/howitworks.ht
His science? Please.
The quickest way to turn people off about your theories is to act all hubris. While it's one thing to be confident, it's quite another to act like "my shit doesn't stink"
Maybe Wolfram should take some of his own advice about intuition in regards to how to present information to the public.
Life is not for the lazy.
Even though most of you people dont like this site much... I spent a little time listening to several randomly generated songs from this site, and quite a few were very unique and audibly pleasing to me. I think its a pretty cool concept, and its certainly possible to perfect it more. Music might not be as uniquely human as we once thought. Think about it, if some of these songs were made by a human, I'm pretty sure a lot of people would like it more! =P
If we take a simple program, say cellular automata, and use a cluster of computers running Mathematica to generate stunning images and music, we can really speculate on about any imaginable topic! Really!
That being said, even though somewhat redundant, the book is still in my opinion a good reading and provides very interesting intuition and insights about how to deal with traditional problems.
ANKOS would be pretty good with just a few changes:
Reduce page count from 1200 to 400 by removing redundant and self aggrandizing material.
Retract claims that Wolfram is singlehandedly going to change the course of human history.
Choose a title more suitable to the seriousness of the book. Perhaps "An Introduction to Cellular Automata" or "Fun With Graph Paper"
I couldn't tell the difference between this, and "real" hip-hop.
The other genres sounded just like some random notes selected from a predefined list to keep the composition in tune.
My conclusion is, that this is how that hippety-hop music is actually created.
My name shall from now on be "Big Gangsta Al". Stay tuned for my new album.
From "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" By "Douglas Adams" (Talking About a Financial
spreadsheet program for the Mac) :
'You see, any aspect of a piece of music can be expressed as a sequence or pattern of numbers,'
enthused Richard. 'Numbers can express the pitch of notes, the length of notes, patterns of pitches and
lengths.'
'You mean tunes,' said Reg. The carrot had not moved yet.
Richard grinned.
'Tunes would be a very good word for it. I must remember that.'
'It would help you speak more easily.' Reg returned the carrot to his plate, untasted. 'And this
software did well, then?' he asked.
'Not so much here. The yearly accounts of most British companies emerged sounding like the Dead
March from Saul, but in Japan they went for it like a pack of rats. It produced lots of cheery company
anthems that started well, but if you were going to criticise you'd probably say that they tended to get a
bit loud and squeaky at the end. Did spectacular business in the States, which was the main thing,
commercially. Though the thing that's interesting me most now is what happens if you leave the accounts
out of it. Turn the numbers that represent the way a swallow's wings beat directly into music. What
would you hear? Not the sound of cash registers, according to Gordon.'
Has anyone ever heard of "Band in a Box"? It's a similar idea (and quite old) - the quality of music it produces it much better.
Way back in the days of type-your-code-in-from-a-magazine-listing, I remember someone publishing a set of programs for the Commodore 64 and VIC-20 that generated music in the style of Mozart using a database of chords and notes based on an analysis of Mozart's compositions. As I recall the music was very good.
AT&ROFLMAO
Cellular automata and music (in java): http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-ca music/?ca=dnt-520
Common Music (jazz in lisp): http://commonmusic.sourceforge.net/doc/cm.html
Mix this with some computer generated lyrics, a text-to-speech system, and go rock the Top 100's!
word word word *BING* ding duh-dong dong.
Although many comments seem to feel it's pointless and sounds like ancient console music, some of the compositions are quite interesting, particularly from a minimalist point of view. It'd be nice to export the loops straight to Garageband and use them as a basis for further experimentation.
Perhaps Apple would consider licensing the algorithm to install as part of Garageband by default. Garageband seems almost ideal for this kind of 'toy' - it's hardly of interest to professional musicians, but for the amateur dabblers with Garageband it's great fun...
Judging by the "How WolframTones Works" page...
I saw a paper on exactly this a few years ago (perhaps written by these people?). I was particuarly disappointed in the uncreative approach to attaching it to music. Completely one-dimensional, based on a single pattern rule, using the results as a simple piano roll. In this particular example, it seems the programmer has inserted a few generic style and rhythm rules as well. Cute.
If the computation could generate anything more than a bunch of undirected pitches, I might be impressed. Perhaps have variables that can trigger harmonic shifts, considerations of form, independent patterns, definitions of rules for the next 10 seconds for an evolving pattern... SOMETHING more innovative than using it as a piano roll.
It's also disappointing that the score just takes a snippet of the whole pattern and truncates the rest. Some border rule treatment could have added to it.
Hopefully, this will be only the beginning of a much more interesting project. If this is the final result, my fascination has ended.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
"It was only an 'opeless fancy.
It passed like an Ipril dye,
But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred!
They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye!
The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound. He could hear the woman singing and the scrape of her shoes on the flagstones, and the cries of the children in the street, and somewhere in the far distance a faint roar of traffic, and yet the room seemed curiously silent, thanks to the absence of a telescreen."
Preamble: just take a quick read to TFA and not listened to any of the samples, just "looked" at some of their graphic representation.
It immediately reminded me a very old - but still functional - project called Musinum - The music in the numbers (windows only - sorry) which takes a math function defined by the user and it translates it to notes to be played.
Obviously consider this is dated '99 for the latest revision, so don't expect exagerated eye-candy here.
The interesting thing here is the ability to take a sequence of numbers and to send them to a music device (your computer's soundcard or an external midi instrument).
The algorithm of translation could be very simple (as is Musinum) or quite complex (from what I saw from the WolframTones snapshots). Just a matter of the "fantasy" of the software coder.
Anyway, from what I recall of MusiNum, many of the patterns played are very very similar in acoustic to other "real" songs listened aroud...
I guess a new specialty in the public relations field must be emerging - PR types capable of hyping up someone's book or product (like that keyboard) by getting it posted on Slashdot.
http://tones.wolfram.com/id/G1aG90C9HT8B689djr5D7B VCYdxjun4riZW4
If you know anyone tooting other people's horns, let me know.
yeah the genres are complete bullshit. Click the same genre over and over and you get things that are radically different enough to be in another of the supposed genres on the list. I am not sure about the philosophical question about whether this stuff counts as "music" but it's certainly not something I would want to listen to for very long. However, if I were a composer I could see how this tool could be useful -- generate a few random measures of this stuff, repeat it a few times around certain formulas and send it to your favorite instruments via midi, and presto -- instant bland, generic, yet technically "original" music to pipe into shopping malls or whatever. It's a cool experiment in some ways and I would be interested to see what a recording artist might come up with using this as a tool to do something more creative than that. But, again, there's no way I would listen to this stuff for more than a few minutes.
Are we sure they aren't using this to torture detainees at Guantanamo?
If I had to listen to this random assortment of midi tones for hours on end I'd confess to anything!
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Well, the music is stunning. But definately not in the "oh my god that's beautiful" sort of stunning. More in the "Wow, not only is it poorly written, but the instrunments are all wrong and even the performance is poorly executed" sort of way.
Sure, maybe someday computers will be able to write good music (and I'm not saying have it pump out a million songs and then have a human choose the good ones.) But this ain't it. So it does nothing to prove his theories.
My shit doesn't stink, and neither will yours if you invest in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Our R&D team has created A New Kind of Pill(TM) which disperses nano-destinkers throughout your body, thus eliminating all unpleasant odors, including shit! Order now while supplies last and receive your own amazing, free, highly-durable polymer, felt-covered water-resistant, portable cup holder, fits in any new model vehicle and handmade by the indiginous people of wherever! Don't wait, this is a limited time offer, only available for a limited time!
I've generated some pretty cool tunes. They let you bookmark a composition, but they won't let you download the midi file. Has anybody already looked into the sources and found out how to get it?
a lot of people confuse hubris and confidence. Boasting about real achievements is often not tolerated. I don't see good reasons for that. Stretch this a bit by allowing different judgements of how "real" the achievement is, I still see no good reasons.
You're jumping between the observation of egos that are out of proportion with the person behind them, and the pragmatics of taking in account silly sensibilities of the audience.
I suppose Wolfram has two problems here?
How does one take a pattern generated by a cellular automaton, and render it as music? The key idea of WolframTones is to take a swath through the pattern and tip it on its side, and treat it as a musical score Once the cellular automaton pattern has been "tipped on its side" so that time runs across the page, the height of each black square is related to the pitch of a corresponding note. The specific mapping from height to pitch is determined by the musical scale that is used. Each scale picks out certain of the 12 standard tones in an octave. The C major scale, for example, picks out the following:
However I'm not sure it is as groundbreaking as Wolfram claims. There are plenty of sites on the net where you can find cellular automaton based music includng one at Source Forge
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
"DSP" have been doing mathematic, fractal, aleotoric, and genetic music using samplers and digital audio instead of synthesizers. Very cool for those afflicted with synaesthesia. ;)
They have mp3s at http://www.sonicunion.com/index.php?id=22.
But I liked this better :)
Your type of response is a typical example of sophomoric knee-jerk reactions from people who totally have no clue about whatever it is they are criticising.
Ok, Wolfram.
I wish I had some mod points. Please, someone, mod this up!
AccountKiller
The parent is right. Wolfram's thematic idea - determining behavior at time t + delta from behavior at time t based on simple combinations of behavior at nearby points - was developed by J. C. P. Miller in Periodic Forests of Rooted Trees, in the Phil. Trans. Royal Society.
Unfortunately, the article is so old (about the 1960's) that it doesn't seem to be available on-line, except a title in Math-Sci Net. Miller was a mathematician at Cambridge; the ideas were further developed by John Conway when he was still there.
For an alternative, you may like to check out Band-in-a-box
Lifted from the site: "Band-in-a-Box automatically generates a complete professional quality arrangement of piano, bass, drums, guitar and strings in a wide variety of popular styles. (Jazz, Pop, Country, Classical and more.)"
OK this may sound like a shameless plug, but at least it's on-topic.
I've used Band-in-a-box as a modern alternative to the rhythm-box found in most modern midi keyboards and electronic organs (music-minus-one). At least you don't get all weary and bored after listening to it for more than 64 measures...
I for one think that most aleatoric and algorithmic music generators sound soul-less and dull after some time listening to them and are of little use except for some kinds of 'ambient' music.
At least the guy who did Band-in-a-box seems to have a decent idea of musical structure, chord progressions, feel etc.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
On the heels of the announcement of computer generated repetitious musical compositions, is the retirement of many minimalist composers such as phillip glass, terry riley, and mike oldfield.
Many of you - and most everyone, I think - miss the point of Wolfram's cellular automata experiments. They are based on the observation of patterns in nature. Patterns are *everywhere* in nature, and Wolfram uses mathematical theory to create patterns, perhaps in hopes of discovering an insightful relationship between theory and the patterns. It is pretty hardcore stuff - even for scientists - due to its completely abstract nature.
Wolfram does tend to abstain from modesty, but perhaps it is because modesty means little when there is so much to be discovered. Perhaps most of what he has built has come from the ground up, without hours spent reading past research. I doubt his work in cellular automata stemmed from music, rather his thoughts spread to music after much work on cellular automata..
It'll never be popular.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You'll also need the MIDI renderer timidity, which is likely already installed.
this is something a number of good bands in the IDM field have already been experimenting with. in particular a few on Warp Records such as Autechre and Boards of Canada are well-known for this kind of thing.
:)
Unfortunately I can't find any specific details of what they use algorithmically, I don't think they've disclosed that. However, the music is great so check it out
Algorithmic composition is old hat. Intellectually interesting but soul-less music, more math-turbation.
Personally, I wasn't impressed with the sounds generated. It sounded too much like midi files of which can be generated by many programs, like SimTunes and Hyperscore.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
After reading Sartak's reply to this, I believe Sartre said it best when he said "A.C., you just got effed in the a."
...and Casio is gonna be PISSED!
Does anyone else here think the generated music just plain sounds bad? I don't think any composers' livelihoods will be in jeopardy for quite some time. :-)
This "Music" is garbage.
This certainly is a "new kind of music" - the type no-one would want to listen to. If you program a computer to generate notes using an algorithm, you don't end up with music, you end up with noise; and that's exactly what WolframTones produces.
This is an interesting toy, but Wolfram's hyperbole makes it a cruel joke.
If you believe that intelligence, beauty, and feeling can be reduced into some algorithm or set of heuristics, Wolfram's got some snake oil for you. So do most of the other artificial intelligence gurus.
Wolfram wants you to conclude that he's come upon some great secret that explains the origin of information. His evidence, however, is weak, so he puts lipstick and a wig on it to mask what he has really learned.
What Wolfram has really learned, if he was honest to admit it, is that there are no reductionist approaches that can generate "Real Music" in the same sense as compositions by folks like Mozart, Bach, Beethoven.
Even the post-modernist composition styles that are being shoved down unsuspecting music students' throats are more real than this nonsense.
I'm sure that there are now hundreds if not thousands of people that have bought into this pseudo-science, near religion that Wolfram has cooked up, because they have never learned to think criticially. Please deposit your tithe into the Wolfram basket, thank you very much!
Kinda sounds like Way Forward Technologies' "Anthem" to me (DGHDA). Nothing "new" there.
Well, isn't that appropriate for a music application?
There was a story a while ago about a system which used hamsters to generate music. What I can say is that this is probably /better/ than that ;)
However, it's still profoundly far from being listenable. We want a key centre/s, proper cadences, decent timbre, singable melodies, augmented/diminished triads, nice chord combinations, and decent orchestration!
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I know some of the folks involved in this effort, I think some additional insight might help here.
Very broadly, the work and algorithms behind WolframTones attempt to transpose the mathematical qualities of patterns into an auditory medium. A pattern (generated algorithmically) is analyzed and the derivative of the pattern determined; this yields a shorthand way of describing how the pattern changes over time. This change information is then mapped onto a musical scale as a way of perceiving the data audibly, much as a graph is used to perceive data visually. MIDI is the conduit used to convert mathematical values into notes.
Once the method of mapping patterns to notes is established, several possibilities arise. WolframTones allows you to generate new patterns that produce different kinds of audible sequences - yes primitive sounding now, but interesting in that it's essentially music based on mathematical noise mapped to scales. Change the scale from a western to a non-western variety, or change the mapping transfer function, and the style of music can be changed. Could be rather impressive down the road once people refine the process and learn more of what it can do. Early synth work was very primitive also.
But perhaps most interesting, once a library of pattern-to-music transformations is created they can be used as a tool to analyze unknown patterns. Feed an incoming data stream into the system and listen to what comes out; tweak the algorithmic properties to focus. Another auditory method of perceiving patterns and behavior may someday become very useful in some fields. Data analysis by the blind, perhaps?
A few folks felt this was a concept worth mucking around with; you can view this product as the first result.
Naturally, the uneducated fools of the time proclaimed such things to not be "music" - famously, there was that so-called "riot" at the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring , which is now considered to be one of the finest pieces of music written in the 20th century.
I agree with your point, but I don't think the Rite of Spring example necessarily supports it.
The premiere of the piece involved very controversial choreography, dance, and acting which included a pagan sacrifice. Such a display in front of a high-society audience, independent of any music, was reason alone for rejection in 1913, I think.
When the music concert of Rite of Spring alone premiered with no dancing (same year or the year following, I think), it was a huge, fairly uncontroversial success. And it still is, as you point out.
Anyways, it's an interesting piece, but I don't think it was strongly questioned as being "music" when its music alone was judged.
Thanks to Worlfram for "discovering" something that Musicians have known for millenia. Music is a mathematical thing by nature.
Why do you think things are measured in 4/4 time? Or we music has whole=1 half=1/2 quarter=1/4 eigth=1/8 sixteenth=1/16 32nd and 64th notes? Math governs the cadence and rythm of music.
So, it's not a leap to create music which sounds similar to a different style in a computer. Different musical styles have thier own unique characteristics. For instance, Jazz might have an accented 3-2-3 (swing) rythm. Where as classical is point-counter-point with a uniform rythm.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I see everyone complaining that it sounds like crap. Does it sound like crap because the melody sucks, or does it sound like crap because it just sounds like computer generated tones?
What if this thing was hooked up to a decent midi device, or some sort of device that had actual recorded sounds of the instruments? Maybe add some fret noise for certain types of guitars, etc...
I think something like this would actually be pretty cool to have set up on a machine, or as an appliance to provide quiet background music for public places, or when just sitting around the house. Have it randomly change settings and instruments, or allow you to define a certain set of parameters that you wanted to stay constant (types of instruments, pitch, whatever).
It could be your own personal composer that never played the same tune twice. I don't think this would sound half bad if it had decent reproductions of instrument sounds in it, the classical tab produced some interesting results when I changed the default from horns to strings and violins, and then increased the height to like 19 in the other tab.
What about setting up an app with this that communicates back to a central server. When you are just listening to it and you hear something you particularly like, you hit a button and it uploads the settings you've had over the past few minutes to the central server. All devices download those "higher" rated setting, make variations on them and play them. People re-upload the settings they like, and the process starts all over again. Would you eventually end up with "perfect" music?
A lot of people are dismissing this thing as crap, but it's really rather interesting.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
In Firefox:
1. Go to Tools.
2. Page Info.
3. Media.
4. Click on the link whose type is "Embed"
5. Click "Save As..."
You can then use iTunes or a program of your choice to change it to another format. Enjoy.
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Look at my other post please
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Chirst.
Every hear of Turing? Church? Post? Von Neumann? Taking step t and producing t+1 is called computation. It wasn't invented by some obscure paper in the 1960s.
Needs more cowbell!
:(
No, seriously. I can't pick cowbell as an instrument
This reminds me of Fractal Music. Its an application of mathematics (fractals) to produce 'unique' music. So, is what Wolfram's done really unique?
Hey buddy, over 200 scientific papers cite NKS: http://www.wolframscience.com/reference/bibliograp hy.html
Wolfram's earlier papers on cellular automata have literally thousands of citations.
What have you produced lately?
Evryone else post theirs too
2 l27hZDSO5btPgMHlEfHAx9g2G
http://tones.wolfram.com/id/GrAMpRZwE6hkGUO9WuKXM
supposedly one of the big major recording companies has a super-computer that has all of the past 50 years greatest hits stored in it, and it tries to calculate the next big hit song structure. in 2005, we have things like myspace, computer search engines invanding our sexual dating lives. now we have computers generating art for us scary, but beautiful
A New Kind of Elevator.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
I have also used Mathematica to produce "music", or at least interesting noise. I tried to incorporate some music theory into my algorithm, which is much more complicated than Wolfram's seems to be, and is able to produce sounds with a certain shape, although I would hesitate to call it musical structure.
Examples of results of gotten are included at http://music.download.com/andrewdabrowski and I have a hybrid piece, part Mathematica generated, part human composed, at http://mypage.iu.edu/~dabrowsa/junk.html.
I should say that my Mathematica program produces raw midi files of voices, without any instrumentation. That is added by "hand" afterwards.
`Perche non reggi tu, o sacra fame de l'oro,l'appetito de' mortali?'
"L-Systems" mean the same kind of L_System used for autogenerating graphics?
I've seen some neat organic looking images come from that.
Are you serious? Out of a huge bibliography list you cherry pick some suspect candidates, but ignore a large number of papers in perfectly respectable journals.
-IEEE Software
-Physica A
-Physica D
-Physical Review E
-Artificial Life
-Neurocomputing
-Journal of Difference Equations and Applications
-Journal of Molecular Modeling
-Journal of Integer Sequences
-Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing,
-Chaos, Solitons and Fractals
-Iternational Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos in Applied Sciences and Engineering (2004)
-Plant physiology
-Thesis written at schools like Columbia and MIT
You can disagree with Wolfram but it just makes my blood pressure rise when people essentially lie about the facts. And hey, just because the ideas are applicable in a broad range of unusual places like art is a good sign, not a bad one.
All Stephen Wolfram did was compile 20 years of research in information theory, emergent systems, and the like, and call it a "New Kind of Science" and claim it as his own. There's a scathing letter from someone at the Santa Fe Institute documenting every claim Wolfram calls his own and a corresponding paper from the Institute published years before NKoS. There are tons of these.
Wolfram is a genius, but NKoS is no evidence of that fact.
After all, I am strangely colored.
http://www.anvilstudio.com/
its free and it works well.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
This sounds a lot like (although slightly ahead of) a pet project I wrote a while back and just put online for people to play with. It's called Phonomator and simply generates new midi files of "improvised" music based on a form you fill out. Check it out (source code) at:
/ proj.phonomator
http://www.sitelliteforge.com/index/siteforge-app
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
Has anyone tried to use genetic algorithms to evolve music and/or music producing algorithms? The downside is that you may have to do a lot of listening to provide selection feedback. And, it would be highly customized to yourself.
Table-ized A.I.
It looks so opinionated I couldn't stand reading the preface of his book.
For more than three centuries, the exact sciences have been largely based on the paradigm of using mathematical equations. The major shift that underlies NKS is the idea of generalizing this, to consider all the kinds of rules that can be embodied in computer programs.
isn't this even in languages? look into algorithm.h in all major languages for more.
Still dares to claim to have a ``large following" --- this is definitely a work of an insane person.
Please lock this guy up. I shall not even think of having another ``she bangs" in society. One is more than enough. That particular guy... can't stand his voice anymore. I don't want another one.
I actually use Mathematica, kthx.
Wow, great insight. Except, Turing et al.'s work was specifically related to abstract computing "machines." Later people figured out that nature itself might be deterministic in a sense analogous to Turing machines.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Yet another marketing move from Wolfram.
And still, nothing changes the fact the Mathematica had a history of bugs (because they used C throughout, instead of writing a kernel in C and then writing a language on top of that).
Also, nothing changes the fact the integration with Mathematica produce "weird" results, very different than what you find "by hand." Maple and Maxima produce results that aren't weird.
Graphics are prettier in Mathematica. So what?
My university mathematics department sticks to Maple, and so do I. No amount of self-promotion by Stephen Wolfram will change that.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Nifty. I hope I'm not the only one here who recognizes that name, though I'm no expert in the field. I've got his and Lindenmayer's (the "L" in L-systems, of course) book The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants . A great read for the mathematician-turned-artist.
Steven N. Severinghaus
Yup, that's the same thing. I got yer neat organic-looking images right here, along with my Java source.
Steven N. Severinghaus
I couldn't find any sort of reference or acknowledgement to previous work on the subject.
When asked at a lecture to comment on the relationship between his work and previous cellular automata work, Wolfram brushed it off saying it's completely different.
The thing I hate most about this approach to "music" is that its completely ignorant of (what I consider to be) the most essential musical element: A REAL HUMAN BEING who is, in the moments of the songs creation, emotionally attached to the progression of the sounds and contributing improvisational changes to the song (melody, harmony, rhythm, tone, etc) that enable the song to reflect the emotional state (and progression) of the musician at the time the song was created. Bad run on sentence but you get the idea =)
Its difficult to listen to and attach oneself to "music" that contains no continuous emotional progression - without it, the only way the listener can connect with the song by rationally considering the how/why of the song.
Plenty of people prefer this kind of "academic" experience of music, and thats ok... but I think those people are missing out on something essential, that was with music from the very beginning, long before we began to deconstruct the idea of the song and reverse engineer the mechanics of sound.
t
And then Stephen Wolfram of Wolfram Research (of WolframTones fame) received a call from Commissioner Gordon on the Wolframphone. "To the Wolframmobile!" cried Wolfram. How does it end? Tune in next week, same Wolfram-time, same Wolfram-channel.
Cellular Automata and Music Using Java
Justin Powell writes "Take computers, mathematics, and the Java Sound API, add in some Java code, and you've got a recipe for creating some uniquely fascinating music. IBM Staff Software Engineer Paul Reiners demonstrates how to implement some basic concepts of algorithmic music composition in the Java language. He presents code examples and resulting MIDI files generated by the Automatous Monk program, which uses the open source jMusic framework to compose music based on mathematical structures called cellular automata."
Whether he toots his own horn or someone else toots his horn or he toots someone else's horn is actually irrelevant. What really matters is: is this site properly rated as AO?
Hitler had more than 200 backers. What are you producing buddy In America there is talk of free speech. Some people understand that this freedom might need to be enforced.
Some of this actually resembles the crap you hear while riding in elevators and while holding on the telephone. A lot of crappy musicians just lost their jobs!
I looked through all the instruments. There's no cowbell. It needs more cowbell.
Isn't something close to this being done already? There are humans rather than machines at the backend, but the process seems to involves more creativity going into the marketing, and less into composition and performance. Even with new talent trying to be creative, it gets filtered out. Hopefully "podcasting" can turn things around, but its pretty bad already.
How would you feel if you actully knew this song really belongs to Doki Doki panic, and the real SMB2 was actually what was much later known in US as "The Lost Levels"?
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
Many of you - and most everyone, I think - miss the point of Wolfram's cellular automata experiments. They are based on the observation of patterns in nature.
I got that point reading ANKOS. Actually I had it smashed over my head several times per chapter. And it is interesting. My main problem with ANKOS and Wolfram is the outlandish claims, mainly that this is a "new science" and is about to change the world. ANKOS puts forward interesting ideas, but they only rise to the level of curiosities. I can't predict nature with CA. I can't calculate a trajectory for mars orbit insertion with CA. ANKOS is even weak on where this line of research should progress to. CA patterns are interesting, and the fact that they mimick patterns in nature is interesting. But then what? CA may change the world, but ANKOS is a trivial step towards that future.
"I wouldn't trust anything Wolfram says about his creations. He has a tendency to toot his own horn."
Precisely how does someone's egotism invalidate their science? So fucking what if he's a blow hard and even pretty much lies about his own importance (I never heard his name once during two stays at Santa Fe Institute which he claims to have pretty much invented). The point of ANKoS is that all these results are generated as a result of these simple rule sets which have absolutely nothing to do with what Wolfram thinks of himself.
Also, he's placed himself in the position of relying on his own horn, and nobody else's, by focusing on his work rather than wasting time engaging in the mutual masturbation of social glad-handing that most scientists engage in as part of the social aspect of doing science. Doing that only serves and perpetuates itself. He cut out the bullshit so he could do what he's best at. So what if he's a dick.
Who tooted Newton's horn over Principia Mathematica? Newton did. Is ANKoS to be ranked with Principia? You'll never know because you won't believe anything it says because Wolfram blows Wolfram colored smoke along with some of the most clearly objectified information ever created.
By constricting his rule sets to create a reciprocal-of-frequency power output rule and integer divisble timing rules, he's produced a musically based Turing test. Take some of these are feed them through XM, Sirius and Clear Channel's jazz programs and I'll bet not one person calls in to say "Hey, that was computer generated". It's an empirical question, just like the claims Wolfram makes about the results rather than his own importance. It'd also make a damn fine statement about musicians, their music and what they think music and creativity is, particularly since they're the ones to pull this test on to get to the real matter at hand.
But then, you'd be relying on the word of people who depend on tooting their own horns (pun unintended) to make themselves not only known but to be experts in their field. We certainly can't be taking the word of people who've worked hard to become the best at what they do that they're the best at what they do. Far better we rely on the word of people who can objectively judge the worth of a creation based on their far less experienced opinion but also on the all-important factor of whether they're pissed off because the creater has an ego.
So we should ignore what someone puts forth as testably objective, because other things they say are subjective and self-serving? We should instead take the word of other peoples' emotional reactions to the latter? Who the fuck are they and their opinions that we should forgo what may be good and useful science because they don't like the way Wolfram acts? That requires every bit as much egotism as is being accused. The difference being is Wolfram is famous and they're not because Wolfram has created something spectacular and they haven't, and they're pissed because he's rubbing their nose in it.
Yeah, blame Wolfram for doing what you're doing with far less cause than he has to do it. You might consider testing the validity of this by comparing how many copies of ANKoS, egotism included, have been sold, as compared to all the books covering the topic "Wolfram is a dick". If value can be measured by what someone will pay for something, Wolfram's ideas, including those about himself, are worth fifty bucks a copy, whereas peoples' opinions on Wolfram's dickness are worth every penny they paid to post and/or read it on Slashdot.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
i find the results of Mozart's Musical Dice Game way more pleasant to the ear. It's limited to piano, but really sounds very nice.
At first I thought it was strange how classically Baroque the sample on http://tones.wolfram.com/about/how.html sounds. Not wanting to sound snobby, but the sounds being generated wouldn't sound so genuinely 'new' to someone who has listened to a number of dense notational compositions of Baroque Fugues. Then I remembered Bach was a mathematician, and some of the Fugues Baroque composers wrote can be considered mathematical excercises as much as anything.
It's thought many passages of these Fugues were written without the aid of a piano, merely working from clusters of notes and their variations. As a result they go like automata, sounding like machines set in motion that develop variations and themes, and for a lot of people are quite unlistenable. I've played a Bach Fugue and the basic technique I was taught was 'be the machine!'
I never said anything in my post about Wolfram's science being invalidated because of his character. I just said I wouldn't trust what he says when he tries to pass off his work as Earth shattering.
Maybe you need to relax.
A few years ago, I went to the first annual Workshop for Algorithmic Computer Music ( http://summer.ucsc.edu/wacm/ ) where there was a rather fascinating lecture about sonifying Wolfram's ideas. Certain cellular automata sound truly stunning. I recommend the workshop to any who are interested in learning more about Algorithmic Music.
http://tones.wolfram.com/about/faqs/howitworks.htm l
What are the historical antecedents of WolframTones?
Ideas of "generative music" or "algorithmic composition" go back a long way. Mozart, for example, was said to have a scheme for composing minuets based on throwing dice. In the early 20th century, composers like Schoenberg considered formal matrix-like methods, and especially in connection with early synthesizers there was interest in deriving music from electronic and other physical processes. In the late 20th century, many experiments were done using 1/f noise, fractals, L systems, and even cellular automata. Most often, explicit randomness was taken as the foundation, and extensive layers of post processing were done. The publication of A New Kind of Science led to a new approach, and much purer ways to derive music from the computational universe--culminating in WolframTones.
Reduce page count from 1200 to 400 by removing redundant and self aggrandizing material. Retract claims that Wolfram is singlehandely going to change the course of human history
I remember thinking along the same lines when reading the book, but planning it more concretely: literally edit it down to an ultra-compact version that contains _all_ the substance of the original, and publish it anonymously on the net. Partly just to see/demonstrate how much smaller it would be, but also to spread the interesting parts to people who wouldn't stand wading through all the opinionated and self-aggrandizing dreck in it.
Disclaimer: I think some of the grander ideas in it do have some revolutionising potential in several fields, but the crackpot wrapping doesn't exactly help it get anywhere.
sudo ergo sum
What have you produced lately?
Umm, a rather large quantity of theoretical and applied work in fields ranging from computer science (quantum computing, 3D graphics) and astronomy (cataclysmic variable binary star systems) to quantitative finance (improved tail-sensitive alternatives to VaR for highly kurtotic equity markets). I've published several papers and conference presentations, assisted with several others, started and sold a software company that made a successful niche product for financial markets and worked at a well-respected hedge fund.
How about you, Mr. Anonymous Coward? What have you produced lately? Don't start blabbing your mouth if you have no clue who you're talking to.
Now back to the main point: how many of those papers build on original principles of Mr. Wolfram's as their key aspects, and how many simply reference it as a popular summary and overview of cellular automata?
Every time I mention that Sen. Orinn Hatch of Utah watns to have a chip in your PC that will permanently destroy it if there is even a claim that you might be violating IP laws....Wolfram Software sends a DMCA notice against all of my web pages, calls my employer, and tries to have me fired.
You decide if you want to do business with a company that abuses the DMCA this way.
same concept, open source, java, and no mathematica required, also about 5 years older.