'Bot Dylan' AI writes its own catchy folk songs after studying 23,000 tunes
The future of music: 'Bot Dylan' AI writes its own catchy
folk songs after studying 23,000 tunes
Computer composes new tunes after being trained on 23,000
Irish folk songs
This allowed AI to learn the patterns and structures that
make for a catchy tune
So far it has created over 100,000 new machine 'folk
tunes', researchers say
It marks a significant step forward for the capabilities
of artificial intelligence
By RICHARD GRAY FOR MAILONLINE PUBLISHED: 05:01 EDT, 26
May 2017 | UPDATED: 07:02 EDT, 26 May 2017
Researchers have created a 'Bot Dylan' computer that is
capable of writing its own folk music.
The system uses artificial intelligence to compose new
tunes after it was trained using 23,000 pieces of Irish folk music.
This allowed the machine to learn the patterns and
structures that make for a catchy tune before it created its own pieces of
music that we showcased at a concert in London this week.
It marks a significant step forward for the capabilities
of artificial intelligence.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The computer system has been trained using 23,000 pieces
of Irish folk music.
Dr Ben-Tal and his colleagues chose to use Celtic folk
music to teach their AI composer as it has a relatively well-defined structure
and plenty of material to train it from.
They used transcriptions of folk tunes that use a reduced
form of music notation known as ABC.
Their machine is able to take one ABC symbol and suggest
the next by drawing on the patterns it learned from the tunes it was initially
fed.
Dr Ben-Tal said so far it has created more than 100,000
new machine 'folk tunes'.
Creative and artistic expression has long thought to be
beyond the capability of AI, and many have insisted it will be one of the few
areas where humans will have an edge over machines.
But the new computerised composer, developed by
scientists at Kingston University in London and Queen Mary University of
London, suggests the line between man and machine may not be so clear.
Dr Oded Ben-Tal, a senior lecturer in music technology at
Kingston University in London, said: 'We didn't expect any of the
machine-generated melodies to be very good.
'But we, and several other musicians we worked with, were
really surprised at the quality of the music the system created.
'People are reluctant to believe machines can be creative
– it's seen as a very human trait.
'However, the fact of the matter is, technology and
creativity have been interconnected for a long time and this is just another
step in that direction.'
It is the latest in a number of AI technologies now
capable of producing artistic work.
Google's DeepMind machine learning algorithm has been
churning out psychedelic works of art while AI has also been used to write -
albeit bad- movie scripts and short novels.
There have been other attempts to get computers to write
music such as Google's Magenta project, Sony's Flow Machines and British
start-up Jukedeck.
But he adds that the machine does not appear to be able
to generalise what it learned about music to other contexts.
For example, it still has no concept of how rhythm works,
but replicates it from the songs it has learned.
Dr Ben-Tal believes the AI system may never be able to
completely replace human composers but it could provide a tool to help amateur
musicians write their own music.
He said: 'For beginners, a system like this would help
get you started and avoid the intimidating aspect of composing your own tune as
you could work interactively together.
'An experienced composer could work with the system to
generate new ideas by using their own musical concepts as a starting point.
'This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for
music making.'
Comments
Post a Comment