A Computer Composing and Playing Jazz

Roland Piquepaille writes "The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has some unusual teaching programs. One PhD student, Øyvind Brandtsegg, is a graduate of the jazz program and this article describes how has developed a computer program and a musical instrument for improvisation. The PhD student is 36 years old and is at the same time a composer, a musician and computer programmer. His 'computer instrument' can take any recorded sound as input and split it into a number of very short sound particles that can last for between 1 and 10 milliseconds. 'These fragments may be infinitely reshuffled, making it possible to vary the music with no change in the fundamental theme.'" Brandtsegg improvisational software is called ImproSculpt; his site contains several selections from his musical output, including "some pieces made with the predecessor of ImproSculpt," called FollowMe.

Comments

Re:free form?

[Tablizer]

I went to some free form jazz last night. Everybody seemed to be playing by themselves all at the same time and in a very random fashion. The pianist was just mashing the keyboard. I'm sure a computer could create sounds like that easily.

It may sound random, but one of the things that allegedly makes jazz interesting is the reaction to other players. If another player does something interesting, then you react to it and mirror it in your own way. It's sort of "orchestral swarm theory". I can't say this is true of all players, however.
   

Jazz turing test

[oever]

Have a human jazz band playing and let a computer or a human do the solos. The jury should not be able to distinguish between them.