Music generated from photos

Android mobile phones version

2010-12-16T20:11:00.003+02:00

Android mobile phones version will be available in February. Just shoot a photo and listen the music after a few seconds. Only one button...

"Computers compose original melodies"

2009-01-14T22:20:00.012+02:00

"Thaler sat in front of the Web cam and listened. He indicated his likes with a smile and displeasure with a frown. A critic program connected to the music-generating program learned by watching the emotions play on his face what Thaler liked and gave him more of that. It learned what he didn't like and gave him less of that."
"He turned over the melodies generated by the program to Shawne Benson, a professional musician from Michigan. Benson acted as a conductor, pairing the melodies with harmonies composed by a separate Creativity Machine. But the compositions are still 95 percent to 98 percent compute".
http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2007/jul/09/computers-compose-original-melodies/

Here you will find some demos:
http://www.imagination-engines.com/SON/sample.html

Perhaps some people could like those pieces? But I don't accept this:

"The First Truly Machine Generated Music
Until now, scholarly types have laboriously attempted to discover the explicit “if-then-else” logic for generating new musical themes. They have then embedded such rules in variable outcome scripts executed by a digital computer and all too hastily called the results "computer-generated music."
http://www.imagination-engines.com/SON/descript.html

Artificial Intelligence and music

2008-12-28T12:25:00.011+02:00

"One of my dreams for a long time has been to have compositions which are like living organisms by devising musical agents, primitives, each of them a musical tendency, a melodic shape or harmonic procession or tone color. --- Somewhere between improvisation and composition, it would be a very powerful way of using a computer to allow amateurs to participate in the musical process in a way thay've never been able to before." (Tod Machover in the book THE MEDIA LAB by Stewart Brand, 1987)

That was for 20 years ago. This is Tod's solution February 2008 ... LAURI GRÖHN

Half million dollars in a month selling just iPhone ocarina (story)

2008-12-18T15:53:00.004+02:00

"But Ocarina, which has been downloaded 500,000 times since its debut last month, is currently the number-one musical instrument on iTunes. At 99 cents a pop, the software has been quite a score for the company." (Scientific American, Dec 17 2008)

WoW! I must consider transfering my SW (that generates music from any photos in 5 seconds) to iPhone. LAURI GRÖHN

Comment

2008-12-17T06:39:00.006+02:00

"A more sophisticated approach is presented in the work of Lauri Gröhn [2]. Based on a cell-automaton like concept, images are filtered by removing pixels in an iterative process. Different tracks for the compositions can be obtained by partitioning the image and different movements by applying slightly different graphical filters. A large number of impressive examples is made available on theWeb site and the high number of on-line visits suggest that also that a wide audience is considering the results to exhibit some sort of synaesthetic correspondence." (Pohle & Knees)

A metaphor for Synestesia method

2008-10-02T23:36:00.001+03:00

Using the method I have been developing one can generate music (midi files) from any pictures. Sculptural work is a good metaphor for the method: the sculptor starts from a block of stone or tree which inspires toward a certain end result. Synestesia Method is based on filtering pixels away and on using several selectable parameters. Going back to the sculpture metaphor, using parameters reminds of looking the sculpture from different angles or in lightning and environments. The picture on which the music piece is based and the list of parameters together form the metascore of the composition. The challenge is to find pictures generating interesting music. LAURI GRÖHN

Synesthetic empathy

2008-10-01T10:32:00.001+03:00

"In closing I address the question of whether or not there are icons in Rautavaara's Icons. The work is very iconic in the semiotic sense, but the iconicity is related to a kind of synaesthetic empathy with the world of the Icons, and to the transalation of this synaesthetic experience into musical language."
(Eila Tarasti, teoksessa Musical Semiotics Revisited, 2003, edited by Eero Tarasti)

Software that makes everybody a composer ...

2008-09-30T22:47:00.007+03:00

"He who invents a computer program by help of which anybody can produce music, will soon be as rich as Bill Gates."
(Leif Segerstam,composer and conductor, Suomen kuvalehti 6/2003, translation by LG)

Synestesia Software is that kind of a computer program. The prototype already exist, what is missing are products for different platforms. LAURI GRÖHN

Generative music

2008-09-28T08:23:00.003+03:00

"You never know who made it. With this generative music that I played you, am I the composer? Are you if you buy the system the composer? Is Jim Coles (?) and his brother who wrote the software the composer? -- Who actually composes music like this? Can you describe it as composition exactly when you don't know what it's going to be?"
(Brian Eno)

Music has no semantics

2008-09-27T18:57:00.004+03:00

Most philosophers of music think absolute music has no semantics. The noun "cat" refers to things called cats but sad music has nothing to refer to. Sad people walk slowly and sad music is slow but that is only an isomorphism or a cliché. Pictures on the other hand have semantics. The mapping from pictures to music is always more or less artificial, there is an infinite number of possibilities. LAURI GRÖHN

Everybody can be a composer

2008-09-26T08:06:00.006+03:00

"Meanwhile the evolution of computer music in and for itself, as a purely electronic art, is likely to be happening less in great institutions than living rooms, and to be contributing to a rebirth of domestic music as a creative art, with many millions of composers pursuing their own fantasies, and communicating with others throught computer networks." (Paul Griffiths 1995, Modern Music and After)

Before concert halls and public concerts were born, all music was home music. LAURI GRÖHN

Snapshot Music

2008-09-25T11:28:00.001+03:00

One interesting tool for research (and fun) idea as an application of Synestesia method: Snapshot Music. What you see is a camera lens and loudspeakers on a side of a box. If the camera detects some change on the view the system will wait until the view is nearly static and then the system will generate music using up to 16 instruments and after a few seconds one can listen to the music. The piece will last about one minute and the process will start from the beginning. This tool could be used for experimental musicology in many ways and for music therapy for example. LAURI GRÖHN

Generating original music using computers

2008-09-24T09:32:00.006+03:00

PARIS (30.12.2002) — Just as IBM's Deep Blue showed the world a computer can play chess as well as a human master, Eduardo Reck Miranda, a researcher for the Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc., aims to demonstrate a computer program able to compose original music. So far, neural networks have succeeded in imitating distinct musical styles, but truly original compositions have remained elusive. Miranda is tackling that problem with an orchestra of virtual musicians called agents that interact to compose original music.
(R. Colin Johnson, EE Times )

As far as I know professor Miranda has not been able to demonstrate any programs composing original music. Synestesia Software has been able to that for years! LAURI GRÖHN

Can computers be "creative"?

2008-09-23T12:57:00.003+03:00

It is a well known fact that some of the most original moments in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony have been the result of printers' error. Also the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara has reported that he has got some of his ideas when hitting a wrong piano key during composing. So it seems that live composers may use randomness or serendipity as a creativity tool. It is a kind of a paradox that computer music based on randomness has not been so successful. The Synestesia Software does not use randomness at all, all pieces are deterministic. LAURI GRÖHN

Metacomposer

2008-09-22T07:50:00.005+03:00

"We have now seen the appearance of a new type of composer: the metacomposer, who shapes compositional principles as fluently as traditional composers have shaped compositional material. Far such artists the originality of the music will clearly depend on the originality and subtlety of the programming." (Ray Kurzweil)

Water Lilies

2008-09-21T11:33:00.004+03:00

The piece generated from the painting on the left (painted by Helena Kääriäinen) has been most popular among Chinese people having almost 100 000 downloads. LISTEN !

This was a piece in a water colour exhibition at Arsnet Gallery in Turku where one could also listen to some other paintings.

LAURI GRÖHN