Android mobile phones version

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"

"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

"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)

"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

"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

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

"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)