Music and artificial intelligence
Music and artificial intelligence is the development of music software programs which use AI to generate music.[1] As with applications in other fields, AI in music also simulates mental tasks. A prominent feature is the capability of an AI algorithm to learn based on past data, such as in computer accompaniment technology, wherein the AI is capable of listening to a human performer and performing accompaniment.[2] Artificial intelligence also drives interactive composition technology, wherein a computer composes music in response to a live performance. There are other AI applications in music that cover not only music composition, production, and performance but also how music is marketed and consumed. Several music player programs have also been developed to use voice recognition and natural language processing technology for music voice control. Current research includes the application of AI in music composition, performance, theory and digital sound processing.
Erwin Panofksy proposed that in all art, there existed 3 levels of meaning: primary meaning, or the natural subject; secondary meaning, or the conventional subject; and tertiary meaning, the intrinsic content of the subject.[3][4] AI music explores the foremost of these, creating music without the "intention" which is usually behind it, leaving composers who listen to machine-generated pieces feeling unsettled by the lack of apparent meaning.[5]
History[edit]
Artificial intelligence finds its beginnings in music with the transcription problem: accurately recording a performance into musical notation as it is played. Père Engramelle's schematic of a "piano roll," a mode of automatically recording note timing and duration in a way which could be easily transcribed to proper musical notation by hand, was first implemented by German engineers J.F. Unger and J. Hohlfield in 1752.[6]
In 1957, the ILLIAC I (Illinois Automatic Computer) produced the "Illiac Suite for String Quartet," a completely computer-generated piece of music. The computer was programmed to accomplish this by composer Lejaren Hiller and mathematician Leonard Isaacson.
In 1960, Russian researcher Rudolf Zaripov published worldwide first paper on algorithmic music composing using the "Ural-1" computer.[7]
In 1965, inventor Ray Kurzweil developed software capable of recognizing musical patterns and synthesizing new compositions from them. The computer first appeared on the quiz show I've Got a Secret.
By 1983, Yamaha Corporation's Kansei Music System had gained momentum, and a paper was published on its development in 1989. The software utilized music information processing and artificial intelligence techniques to essentially solve the transcription problem for simpler melodies, although higher-level melodies and musical complexities are regarded even today as difficult deep learning tasks, and near-perfect transcription is still a subject of research.[6][8]
In 1997, an artificial intelligence program named Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI) appeared to outperform a human composer at the task of composing a piece of music to imitate the style of Bach.[9] EMI would later become the basis for a more sophisticated algorithm called Emily Howell, named for its creator.
In 2002, the music research team at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris, led by French composer and scientist François Pachet, designed the Continuator, an algorithm uniquely capable of resuming a composition after a live musician stopped.
Emily Howell would continue to make advancements in musical artificial intelligence, publishing its first album "From Darkness, Light" in 2009, and its second "Breathless" by 2012. Since then, many more pieces by artificial intelligence and various groups have been published.
In 2010, Iamus became the first AI to produce a fragment of original contemporary classical music, in its own style: "Iamus' Opus 1." Located at the Universidad de Malága (Malága University) in Spain, the computer can generate a fully original piece in a variety of musical styles in the span of eight minutes.
With progress in generative AI, models capable of creating complete musical compositions (including lyrics) from a simple text description have begun to emerge. Two notable web applications in this field are Suno AI, launched in December 2023, and Udio, which followed in April 2024.[10]