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Algorithm Composes Music By Text Analyzing the World's Best Novels

Posted by timothy on from the best-novels-worst-music dept.

KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "The recent development of vast databases that link words to the emotions they conjure up is changing the way researchers study text. Sentiment analysis, for example, is increasingly used to gauge the mood of society on topics ranging from politics to movies. Now researchers have used the same technique to measure the "emotional temperature" throughout a novel and then to automatically compose music that reflects the content. The key advance in this work is the development of rules that map the emotional changes into musical qualities such as tempo, key pitch and so on. The team has fed a number of well known books through the algorithm, which they call TransProse. These include lighter texts such as Peter Pan and much darker novels such as The Road and Heart of Darkness. And the music isn't bad (to my untrained ear). The teams say the new algorithm could lead to audio-visual e-books that generate music that reflects the mood on open pages. And it may even be possible to use the algorithm in reverse to recommend known songs that reflect the mood in a book."

22 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Music from text, music from video by buchner.johannes · · Score: 3, Informative

    There is this thing that automatically generates music for a movie, based on what is shown in the movie: http://juke-bot.com/

    --
    NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
  2. Noncreative work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Considering not only that the music industry works more like manufacturing industry than the work of an artist but also that it appears as if the work can be automated, can we reconsider the way copyright works now since it's clearly based on false premises?

    1. Re:Noncreative work by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, because either you are tone deaf or did not listen to the examples. This is just barely 15th century work. Or more like 14th with two people who agreed on a key and tempo and nothing else.

      The most elegant part is the language processing, and we can only guess if that went well.

      The average 10 year old with decent motor skills could do this accidentally. The suggested melodies are novel and unexpected, given that a human did not impose more than the most rudimentary constraints. A gifted composer could take these ideas as a very rough starting point, but that's as far as they got. It would be unrecognizable before the first draft, unless the composer wanted to start with the original and evolve it into something listenable.

      There are positive points to make, but this in no way undermines copyright.

  3. And the music isn't bad . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    . . . to my untrained ear.

    Enough said.

    1. Re:And the music isn't bad . . . by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      It's fairly easy to make automated music that "doesn't sound bad" by choosing a set of chords and a set of notes, then choosing at random. As long as your chords roughly match your melody, and it ends on a tonic it'll sound alright

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:And the music isn't bad . . . by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 1

      You forgot "to my untrained ear". I know plenty of untrained people who can't write or read one bit of music, but they would agree this sounds bad.

      Interesting, nuggets of good ideas, not bad for 2 voices made by a computer, but without qualifiers it is bad.

      Training can be accomplished through repeated exposure, so if you want to call people who discover patterns that they can't explain "trained", fine. Because that just lowers the number of untrained people who might say this is not bad.

    3. Re:And the music isn't bad . . . by drkim · · Score: 1

      It's fairly easy to make automated music that "doesn't sound bad" by choosing a set of chords and a set of notes, then choosing at random. As long as your chords roughly match your melody, and it ends on a tonic it'll sound alright

      Band-in-a-Box does a fairly good job of generating nice sounding music, and a great job of arraigning it too.

      Although you can input your own melodies and/or chords, it also can generate melodies and chords from whole cloth.

      http://www.pgmusic.com/bbwin.d...
      (Try "Exploring Band-in-a-Box 2013")

    4. Re:And the music isn't bad . . . by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Yeah, actually it does better than this lol

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  4. Horrorshow by RDW · · Score: 1

    They've done A Clockwork Orange. Sorry, I'd prefer a bit of the old Ludwig Van.

  5. TransProse, because Anthem was taken by jpellino · · Score: 1

    DNA ahead of his time, as usual.

    --
    "Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
  6. Chopin need not fear anything from this by nightcats · · Score: 1

    I'm fairly sure Commander Data would have come up with some more engaging compositions; this stuff could be placed in an online dictionary beside the word "dull." I suspect that in the next few generations the algorithm will be as abused in applied practice as email, texting, and video have been in our time. Still, if it goes well and the corporations stay away from it long enough for it to develop naturally, the algorithm could become a faltering forward step in human evolution. I am admittedly not confident about that, but it is a good target for hope.

    --
    Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
  7. This is what happens by Jmc23 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    when geeks play with things they don't understand.

    On a positive note, they seem to have expounded our understanding of what music isn't.

    --
    Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
    1. Re:This is what happens by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      On a positive note, they seem to have expounded our understanding of what music isn't.

      [I see what you did there. :-)]

      Music is an artistic expression rendered in sound. It doesn't matter how the sound is generated. What matters is intent.

      So I would say yes, this is music. But whether it's good music is an entirely different question.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  8. It's cute, but ... by Grismar · · Score: 3

    ... the only way this would have truly impressed, if the algorithm had come up with Beethoven's 9th for Clockwork Orange.

  9. How about some mashups? by Ol+Biscuitbarrel · · Score: 2

    "Tinkerbell! Do you carry the fire?"

    1. Re:How about some mashups? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      The Horror!

  10. Would be nice if the site didn't suck by Gothmolly · · Score: 1

    Even if you allow all JS on the page, it still presents you with these shitty 'soundcloud' windows that do nothing - no click, no mouseover, no anything.

    Not everyone uses Safari or whatever or has $foo plugin installed.

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    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
  11. They have it wrong for Clockwork Orange by DavidMZ · · Score: 1

    It should definitely be something more along those lines: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

  12. Simple algorithm by LMariachi · · Score: 3, Funny

    Simple algorithm: Yakety Sax for everything.

  13. Music to tell you how to feel by Joosy · · Score: 1

    >> the new algorithm could lead to audio-visual e-books that generate music that reflects the mood on open pages

    Oh, great. So along with movies that have music to constantly signal you how to feel, we'll have the same for books.

    --
    I'm sick and tired of these hip, "ironic" sigs. This is an actual, honest-to-goodness no-nonsense sig!
  14. Reverse would be more awesome by Arancaytar · · Score: 1

    If you make an algorithm that writes original literature based on music... well *then* we'd basically be looking at the AI singularity.

  15. Can we do it with games too? by JasonGoatcher · · Score: 1

    I've been wanting a way to link up Spotify and my Runescape game. See what they come up with when I fight the Queen Black Dragon.