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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."
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.'
More unique (and irritating) ringtones!
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.
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 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 **
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
I will get interested if they come up with "A New Kind of Sex".
Now, that's something I'll pay to read/watch/partake....
unless of course we have Wolfram himself as main actor.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
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.
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"
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.'
Mix this with some computer generated lyrics, a text-to-speech system, and go rock the Top 100's!
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."
If you know anyone tooting other people's horns, let me know.
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To bypass all the javascript and all other shit:
But I liked this better :)
Music is not something that can be defined in language. That is the trick that Cage pulled with this so-called piece. By drawing foolish critics into trying to say why it wasn't music he was able to side-step them because it can't be done in language. When they failed to define music, or why his childish prank was not music, his supporters then proclaimed that it must therefore be music, handily ignoring the fact that they would be unable to meet the same challenge and define why it was (other than resorting to "because a musician we like said it was").
It's rather like asking someone to define colour and when they fail, as they must, say that therefore "teapot" is a valid colour, indeed that the boundaries of colour have been pushed back by their bold assertion that "teapot" is in fact a valid colour.
If asked why teapot is not a colour, my answer is "don't be a fuckwit", not a deep discussion of wavelengths and cones, or somesuch, just as when asked if Cage's 4'33" (or whatever it was called) is music my answer is "don't be a twat" rather than a deep discussion of wavelenghs, tone, and harmony.
Put another way: I can show you some music and I can show you some things which are not music, but I can not hope, within the limitations of language, to ever capture the subtlties of the subject in an iron-clad and legalistic definition. Asking me to simply shows the bankruptcy of your philosophy and reveals it to be based on nothing more than the sort of semantic buffoonary characteristic of minds which stopped developing around the time their owners' first zits arrived.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
A hundred years ago, Atonality was the 'new thing' and it was to give birth to Serialism. 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.
Fast-forward to modern times though, and you wouldn't enjoy your television, cinema and gaming experiences nearly as much if it were not for the work of those pioneers who were writing things that were not "music" - so perhaps that sort of narrow-minded view is best left buried.
Just because you do not like a thing, does not mean that thing is wrong, does not mean that point of view is incorrect; it's like a farmer telling a city dweller that a domesticated mouse/rat is not a pet, and it should be destroyed because to him, it is vermin.
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..
Well, isn't that appropriate for a music application?
My emotional reaction to the tunes produced by Wolfram's generator is that this is clearly un-musical - sort of an anti-music. As you say, it might be for reasons which can not be captured in language, but the personal experience is just as clear as it could be. On the other hand, some listeners might well perceive this as music although "confuse this with music" seems more appropriate because I think the resemblance is pretty superficial.
This did however suggest a little variation on the celebrated Turing test. Suppose you had two hidden sources of 'music' , one a human synthesizer operator and the other a contrivance like the one on Wolfram's web site. Would it be possible for the human to produce patterns like this which would make his compositions indistinguishable from those produced by the machine? In other words, could a human musician produce long sequences of notes like this without adding in that perceptible "musical" quality (assuming that there is such a thing)?
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.
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.
also; most other forms of art can be explained in roughly the same terms, with some variation on the definiton of #1 (e.g., two dimensional spatial organization of matter == painting). due to the enormous amount of effort it takes to master pts 2 and 3 within a given mode of expression (pt 1), it is necessary for artists to specialize in a fairly narrow set of forms.
scientific domains, engineering (production of goods/services etc), advertising, politics, programming etc are distinct from art forms in that their product in terms of cognitive availability/influence (or physical availability/function) is constrained to fit within a certain form -- respectively, information derived from repeatable initial conditions, a fintely defined product or service that meets a requirement, stimulation of a compulsion to participate in the economy, influence on morals, functionality etc. some forms fall into multiple categories (e.g. industrial design, mainstream pop music, political art, perl poetry, etc...). the reason art is interesting is that it is underconstrained -- it resonates with or stimulates consciousness (i.e., roughly, free will).
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.
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