An Overview of Artificial Intelligence in Music

Over the years, computers have been increasing their role and involvement in the music industry and the different genres of music. Technology advances at a rapid pace and consequently, computers and their software become more and more advanced and are capable of doing a greater number of things and more efficiently. It is the same when we talk about artificial intelligence. Most of us have seen the amazing and human-like things that very advanced robots and computer software are capable of  nowadays; we have from waiter robots, to robots that can play football, to computer programs that can hold a conversation with you. Artificial intelligence is at the center of the reason why these robots and these programs act the way they do.

In music, throughout history we have been able to see different genres and how the way music is composed varies by different periods in time and by geographical regions. In the 20^th century however, we have seen an enormous variety in genres and how music is composed and when we threw computers and artificial intelligence into the mix, it allowed us to explore and come up with even more genres and ways of composing music which otherwise would not have been possible without them. In my future posts, I will be talking both about music composed in part by humans and in part by computers, but I will also be talking about music which is composed entirely by a computer. I would also like to get into the different artificial intelligence techniques that can be used by computer programs to compose music.

Of course, when talking about a type of art and in this case music, there is always the debate of whether or not what is being produced can be considered actual art. I believe few people would argue that music is not art, but when we talk about music that is being composed by a piece of software, there may be more people who may not consider it art anymore. For some, it may be that after listening to a piece of music composed by a program, they may feel as though what is being produced is not good music, or it is not creative. For others, for example a composer who has been studying and practicing music all his life, the idea of a computer program doing his job in a much shorter amount of time may be a tough pill to swallow.

But how can we determine if something is art or if something is creative? What do we take into consideration when deciding whether or not something is creative? Some argue that 'the underlying process must be creative in order for the system to be judged creative' (2). Others feel that 'the output of a system should be the sole determinant of creativity'. Perhaps it all comes down to a matter of opinion.

Whatever your opinion is on this matter, the reality is that a lot of time and effort is put into making these programs. They need to in a way, teach the computer how to compose music. There are four unique problems that need to be addressed when “teaching” and making a computer compose music:

1. 'How will music be measured to provide input information to the computer system?' (1)
2. 'How will that information be presented to the computer?' (1)
3. How will it be represented in the computer program so the computer can understand it? (1)
4. 'What will the computer do with this knowledge?' (1)

A lot of time and thought is put into the making of these computer programs, and we can only expect them to get better with time. There are already albums that contain music composed entirely by computers, and some of this music has already been performed live by orchestras, so I believe it is safe to assume that this type of music is just going to get more popular over time.

References

(1) Chris Dobrian, Music and Artificial Intelligence. 1993

(2) Evan X. Merz, Creativity in Algorithmic music. 2013