Author Archives: Wil

About Wil

A groovy guy thinking deep thoughts.

Music only computers can write

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A while back I was reading David Cope’s book on the idea of computer created music. Cope is using computers to create music that sounds like it was written by humans, and that’s a laudable, worthwhile goal. But I find myself wondering if the real value of computer music would be creating music only computers could write. Could computers create music that would tax the compositional abilities of mere humans?

What would this music be like? I suppose really long pieces – songs that go on for hours or days might be an example. So too could music that requires an incredible attention to detail, like music with very precise rules about how notes vary their frequency. Or perhaps a kind of variations-on-a-theme process that could generate endless variations on a melody.

Such music might be interesting, but I’ll grant you it might be quite boring; some people these days can barely pay attention to a ten minute song, much less a day long one. I think this music would be probably fall into the category of “furniture music”; music meant to be in the background.

Today I came across the website electricsheep.org. This site has a collection of computer created artwork (non-representational art) generated by computers. The computers use a genetic algorithm which is essentially a software process that duplicates the process living creatures go through to evolve. As I understand it, genetic algorithms introduce mutations into output and if those mutations are beneficial, they are adapted as traits. If the mutations are not beneficial it drops them.

I know that’s a bit hard to understand so let me explain with a practical example. Let’s say the electric sheep computer(s) start(s) off with a big red circle. Some possible variations could be “Make the circle blue,” “make the circle more square,” “fill in the circle with polka dots” etc. The traits that succeed get added to the artwork’s “DNA” and carry forth into new generations with additional mutations. But what constitutes the idea of success in this realm? People rank the artwork on the site. Top ranked artwork is more successful that lower ranked art.

Could such a process be applied to computer music? What’s electric sheep doing exactly? It’s taking shapes – circles, squares, grids, cloud type shapes, and changing them. Could something similar happen with music? First we’d have to find some corollaries to shapes in music. This could be chords, melodies, maybe even rhythms. Could a genetic algorithm be applied that morphed these music elements, and then tracked listener preferences, adopting the high scoring mutations into the music’s DNA? That’s the kind of music only a computer could compose.

One final point here. I suspect one other area worth exploring in computer generated music would be microtonal music. This is…

…music using microtones—intervals of less than an equally spaced semitone. Microtonal music can also refer to music which uses intervals not found in the Western system of 12 equal intervals to the octave.

Manipulating music on that level seems like something computers would be good for.

Robot cars

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A recent L.A. Times article covered the topic of self driving cars. The gist is that they’re real, they’re coming and they could be on the road by 2020. This is not to say there aren’t concerns.

“It is uncharted waters,” said James Yukevich, a Los Angeles attorney who defends the auto industry from product liability lawsuits. “I don’t think this is an area very many people have thought much about.”

Coddled by robotic chauffeurs, would people retain the driving skills to take over in emergencies? Who would be liable if an autopiloted car runs through a crowd of pedestrians: the owner or the automaker? Would insurance premiums go up or down? Would cyberterrorists figure out how to make Fords blast through school zones at 100 mph?

The article doesn’t explore what I think would be a likely effect from such technology: loss of jobs. Would robot cars effectively put every cab driver out of business? After all, why should a cab company hire a sweaty Armenian to drive cabs around town when a robot car will happily do it without asking for a smoke break? For that matter, what about the transportation industry? Will robots trucks drive around the nation’s manufactured goods?

I suspect in coming years, after mankind has made itself obsolete with its own technology, many will ask, “Why didn’t we see this coming? Why did no one warn us?” At which point I will step out from behind the curtains and say, “Well, if you had been reading my blog you would have been warned.” Then my robots will kill them.

The plot wheel and random idea generators

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Erle Stanley Gardner is the author famous for creating Perry Mason. He was also noted for his prolific output; he wrote 82 Perry Mason novels in his career! How did he do it? By using the plot wheel. (Demo of the wheel at the link.)

Key to Gardner’s remarkable output was his use of the plot wheels invented and patented by another of his successors, a British crime novelist named Edgar Wallace. By using different combinations of possible twists and turns for both major and minor characters, Gardner was able to construct narratives that held his readers rapt for several decades.

Crime fiction web site The Kill Zone elucidates…

When Gardner kept getting rejection slips that said “plot too thin,” he knew he had to learn how to do it. After much study he said he “began to realize that a story plot was composed of component parts, just as an automobile is.” He began to build stories, not just make them up on the fly. He made a list of parts and turned those into “plot wheels” which was a way of coming up with innumerable combinations. He was able, with this system, to come up with a complete story idea in thirty seconds.

I’ve been intrigued enough by the concept of a random plot generator to start work on a very basic music idea generator. It doesn’t actually write music; it’s merely a list of ways to accompany or dress up a basic tune (for example, by harmonizing a melody in thirds, or applying Bach style counterpoint to the melody.) I’m not randomly generating options though I might try and add that component later (though I would certainly use my discretion in choosing whether to follow the options it produces.)

But why would one want a plot generator or a music idea generator? Why not use the wonderful tool of human creativity? Mainly to overcome a problem that’s all to prevalent these days, the problem of too many options. When constructing a plot it’s very easy to say, “Our hero goes to Istanbul, no wait, Marrakech, no, Tripoli, and there he finds a golden sword, no wait, a magic coffee cup, no, wait, a mystical ashtray and then he…” You get the picture. Stories can suffer analysis paralysis if you can’t cordon your options in. The same goes with music and probably all creative processes. If we had all the time in the world then we could explore all the possibilities, but we seldom do.

The challenge of the “too many options” situation is that you have to know what to throw away. A plot wheel, or my proposed more advanced music idea generator basically uses chance to make these decisions. (A bit like John Cage’s chance derived music.) This isn’t a bad way to get the ball rolling though it probably results in somewhat hokey, discombobulated output. But if you want to knock something out, or are at a standstill, it’s a legitimate option.

This approach isn’t limited to creative processes, by the way. I used to go to movie rental stores and walk the aisles for close to a hour looking for the perfect movie. I probably would have been better off going to a section I liked (horror or independent cinema), throwing a dart and taking whatever it landed on.

My sense is that in this ever expanding world of choices – of 300 channel television, of a world of entertaining web pages (none more so than acid logic), of cheap travel, of Spotify and its collection of 300 trillion cds (I’m making that number up), of internet dating sites with hundreds of profiles etc. etc. – the problem of how to choose has become more daunting. A lot of technology evangelists say, “more choices are better,” but it many ways they are not. The process of choosing puts a heavy load on our brain. It literally tires us out. That’s why I feel choice shortcuts, like plot or music generators, have value.

This idea that to function efficiently one must eliminate unneeded information is not limited to people. The brain does the same thing. Here’s an interesting passage from Ray Kurzweil’s book “How to Create a Mind.”

[Vision scientists] showed that optic nerves carry ten to twelve output channels, each of which carries only a small amount of data about a given scene. One group of what are called ganglion cells sends information about edges (changes in contrast). Another group detects only large areas of uniform color, whereas a third group is sensitive only to the backgrounds behind figures of interest.

“Even though we think we see the world fully, what we are receiving is really just hints, edges in space and time,” says Werblin. “Those 12 pictures of the world constitute all the information we will ever have about what’s out there, and from those 12 pictures, which are so sparse, we reconstruct the richness of the visual world.

Kurzweil then notes…

This data reduction is what in the AI [artificial intelligence] field we call “sparse coding.” We have found in creating artificial systems that throwing most of the input information away and retaining only the most salient details provides superior results. Otherwise the limited ability to process information in a neocortex (biological or otherwise) gets overwhelmed.

So the brain has figured out how to allow passage of only essential information… to chose only the best channels from the 300 channel television, so to speak.

Is there any point to writing anymore?

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This is a question I feel the internet age has engendered, in relation to both fiction and non-fiction. I’ll tell you why.

Let’s say it’s 40 years ago and you’re writing a book on auto repair. You’re describing a particular procedure and realize that before a person could engage in this procedure they would need to replace their radiator hose. So, you write up a whole section on how to replace a radiator hose. And it’s pretty useful; without it your readers would have to put down your book, go to the bookstore and find a book that explains the radiator hose replacement procedure.

Now, in the modern world of interlinked hypertext you wouldn’t need to include that section, you could just link to any of the numerous sources on the web that explain how to replace a radiator hose.

And, frankly, with this in mind you might realize there’s no point writing your book at all. Unless you are really discussing some aspect of auto repair that hasn’t already been covered in some other easily available source, you would really just be creating redundant information. And information these days, with the web, ebooks and such, is much more “easily available” than it’s ever been. (There is, admittedly, a challenge in searching through all that information for trustworthy and correct information, but with a little tenacity it’s doable.)

How about fiction? Certainly every fiction book is in some sense unique. But as I’ve mentioned, I’ve been doing a little work in the realm of book promotion these days and one thing I’ve noticed is that everybody and their dog has written a fantasy novel about a plucky band of dwarves/elves/humans that go off on a mission to free their land from the dark force that emanates from a great tower/mountain/city off in the distance. They’ve also all written novels about a hard nosed detective type with a flaw (alcoholism, self-loathing, pedophiliac tendencies) who has to go up against a serial killer of pure evil (and in the process redeem themselves.)

Are you really doing the world any kind of favor by writing these kinds of books? I would argue no. In both cases – redundant non-fiction and trite fiction – you’re basically creating more noise, more junk people need to wade through to get to the good stuff (like my work.)

So should people just stop writing altogether? Well, I doubt that’s going to happen. But I hope they consider what they are really adding to “the commons” before taking pen in hand.

Our canine brothers

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An interesting NY Times article argues that canine neurological function is – at least in some ways – similar to our own.

Although we are just beginning to answer basic questions about the canine brain, we cannot ignore the striking similarity between dogs and humans in both the structure and function of a key brain region: the caudate nucleus.
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Specific parts of the caudate stand out for their consistent activation to many things that humans enjoy. Caudate activation is so consistent that under the right circumstances, it can predict our preferences for food, music and even beauty.

In dogs, we found that activity in the caudate increased in response to hand signals indicating food. The caudate also activated to the smells of familiar humans. And in preliminary tests, it activated to the return of an owner who had momentarily stepped out of view. Do these findings prove that dogs love us? Not quite. But many of the same things that activate the human caudate, which are associated with positive emotions, also activate the dog caudate. Neuroscientists call this a functional homology, and it may be an indication of canine emotions.

It is a bit of a stretch to conclude that because dog brain components activate in a way similar to ours then they must experience life in the same manner as we do. But it is a step towards that conclusion. And if science does determine that dogs (and likely other animals of similar sentience) feel emotions as humans do, then mankind is going to have to breath in a collective gasp at how we’ve often treated dogs throughout history.

The piece reminds me of an article I once wrote on the topic of morality. It was entitled, “You Think You’re a Good Person? You’re Not!” At one point I said:

By studying the past, and gaining a sense of the evolution of morality, perhaps we can intuit where it is headed. I’ve long felt that there will be a wide expansion of animal-rights in the coming centuries. As animals are revealed to be more and more intelligent and emotive, and as the possibility of “growing meat” becomes reality, there will be increased pressure on the meat industry to soften its ways, or even dissolve completely. (The Spanish government is even currently debating vastly increased legal protections for gorillas.) And some scientists are already arguing that plants have an emotional life, so plant rights may not be far behind. Of course many a science fiction author has painted futuristic scenarios where pieces of technology — computers and robots — demand protection under the law. And in this future era, they will look back at citizens of our age — meat eating, gardening, robot abusing bastards — and be shocked at our cruelty much the same way we are appalled at the behavior of slave owning aristocrats of the 1800s.

Programming the brain with music

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I’m sure most people are, by now, sick of me repeating my belief that emotions are merely physical sensations felt in the body, often the viscera. (If you’re not, here’s a good, detailed rundown.) Basically, I see the process as a computational one. Your brain received some input, say, your girlfriend announcing that she’s been having an affair with your brother, and your brain/body outputs emotion in the form of felt changes in the body like a stomach ache, the tightening of the chest, involuntary gnashing of teeth etc.

I’ve been working on a score for a short horror film lately and am realizing how much of my job is to program the viewer’s brain to have an emotional response. So if character is walking towards a house with a killer in it, I use music to ratchet up the tension, to cause chills to run down the viewer’s spine (or some similar symptom of fear.) Am I succeeding at this? In some cases yes, in others no. It’s a delicate art, one I haven’t really figured out. It’s a matter of learning what specific musical “tools” cause what specific emotional reactions. With horror you end up working with a lot of dissonant chords and melodies, even getting into atonal music. (Atonal means there’s no clear main chord that the music can resolve to. This works perfectly for scenes of unresolved ambiguity.)

Ultimately, it would be nice to really map out the connections between music and emotions so that you could literally program people’s emotional by playing a piece of music. Then I could program unwilling victims to become my army of the night, to go forth and commit heinous acts in my name. And when the police arrived at my doorstep and I would merely blush and say, “What, me? I’m just sitting here playing the piano.”

HAWHAWHAWHAWHAWHAWHAWHAWHAWHAWHAWHAW!!!

Quiet Zones

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I’ve mentioned several times on this blog my belief that this culture of interruption we live in – an environment where we’re expected to drop everything when a phone call comes in, or attend to one panic stricken email after another – is to our detriment. We have, as I sagely put it in this post, gone from having deep attention spans to wide ones.

A lot of my observations of this dysfunction go back to my days working in office situations. In such places the modus operandi is to have pointless meetings that eat into everyone’s time and prevent them from accomplishing what they really need to. This is done to create the appearance of functionality. It never matters whether the people in the room really have the time or brainpower to contribute meaningful ideas. (I was always baffled by the practice of scheduling important meetings right after lunch when everyone is brain dead.)

Additionally, the corporate world seems to be driven by a practice of rushing from one disaster to the next. You’re working on one project deadline until a call or email comes in telling you to switch to an even more urgent deadline, until the next call, wash, rinse, repeat etc.

Frankly, I’ve never expected that the corporate world would change its ways on these matters. But this blog post on the topic indicates that in some quarters these issues are being addressed.

In a recent article, Technology: Finding Our Way Back from the Flatness, I addressed the issue of how the internet and other technology keeps us on insanely high alert, ultimately producing an effect where we attend to everything and we attend to nothing (deeply).

It is my theory that this high-alert state is producing a fatigue that’s detrimental not only to our psyches and relationships, but also to the quality of our professional output.
…
Sullivan and Thompson take the physiological issue a step further and declare that the alert-driven chemical hits to our brain may be producing actual addiction that keeps us in a negative cycle of interruption, costing the U.S. a cool $588 billion per year in productivity losses. To bring that down to a more personal level, when you let yourself get carried away by the high-alert cycle and give in to its constant interruptions, you lose 10 IQ points in each interruption moment (“the equivalent of not sleeping for thirty-six hours—or double the impact of smoking marijuana”), and it takes you about twenty-five minutes to fully return to your original project.

Some large companies like Intel have begun to fight this trend with Quiet Zones aimed at providing a more restful work environment, to increase productivity and literally cut their losses. The Quiet Zones are four-hour spans of time without meetings or technological connectivity.

I can only presume that it was my blog posts on this subject that led to the creation of these Quiet Zones.

Why must music be unique?

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I continue to read David Cope’s “Computer Models of Creativity” which documents his process of creating computer software that can compose music. One point he makes is that context plays into how we respond to music. If we know a musician led a troubled, tragic life we imbue their music with a certain emotional resonance that might not really be there. Or, if we are told the music is about something meaningful, we hear meaning. Cope tells a story of composing a piece of music mainly as an exercise. He was then asked to compose a piece of music for a friend’s memorial service. Being short on time, he used the aforementioned composition. People at the memorial commented on the sadness and “funereal sense” the music provided, even though the music was written as an academic excercise.

In the book, Cope describes another contextual property of music: its uniqueness! He explains…

Since 1980, I have made extraordinary attempts to have Experiments in Musical Intelligence’s [his computer composition software] works performed. Unfortunately, my successes have been few. Performers rarely consider these works seriously. A friend of mine has noted the intimidating nature of the number of outputs possible from computer programs. Uniqueness, he feels, is an extremely important factor in human aesthetics. Knowing that my programs represent an almost infinite font of such works apparently renders them less interesting, no matter how beautiful and different from one another they may be. For many, knowing that I could restart my program at any time, and program a thousand more works, apparently lessens their interest in the one. … This sense of uniqueness is heightened by the fact that for human-created works at least, composers die.

Speaking to that last point, we see this all the time. Jimi Hendrix is alive and well and that 45 he recorded ten years back is worth X dollars. Suddenly he dies and it’s worth much more, even though it’s the same item it was a day previous.

And I think we all understand the general sense Cope is speaking of in that paragraph. It is why a handmade item is worth much more than a factory assembled item which may be of much sturdier construction. This is why people pay millions of dollars for a painting and 30 bucks tops for a poster.

But why does uniqueness drive value? Evolutionary psychology posits a general answer. Those who possess unique things are demonstrating their power and power is an aphrodisiac which increases your ability to pass on genes etc.

I wonder whether we are entering an age of computer produced art, music, film, fiction and what not, and whether that emergence of that age will deflate the market for creative products. I don’t simply ask whether we will pay less for the arts, but whether will we actually enjoy them less? Will knowing that the music we are listening to could have been created in a nanosecond by an artificial intelligence program (regardless of whether it actually was) deprive us of its pleasures?

In closing, I ask you to make note of my subtle yet dramatic use of italicization in this post.

The computer music of David Cope

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Lately I’ve been reading a book called “Computer Models of Musical Creativity” by David Cope. Cope is a musician and programmer who has created software which composes classical music, usually within the style of existing historical composers. The method by which the software does this is complex – you basically have to read the book to understand it – but it does create “human sounding” music that is good, if not great.

One question I’ve had while reading the book is why Cope limits himself to (western) classical music. He explains…

Popular music, for the most part, relies on lyrics, particular timbres, performance context, and many other factors my program cannot control. The mere fact that we know most popular music by its performer, rather than its composer, should confirm the problem.

(Italics are Cope’s.)

He makes a good case, especially in regards to timbre. A song originally played on electric guitar but transferred to zither will not have the same impact. The electric guitar has a certain beefy, manly machismo that gets lost with other instruments. Cope’s point is that it’s not the notes themselves that drive, say, “Black Dog” by Zeppelin, but the notes combined with the guitar tone and various other factors and nuances of performance. On the flip side, Bach’s first invention is largely driven by the notes on the page (combined, one hopes, with a good performance.)

Nonetheless, I don’t see why Cope or some other programmer couldn’t create music that takes timbre into account. I could envision a music creation program that tracks trends in instrument timber and then predicts what will be next and generates some very hip music!

Here’s an example of some of Cope’s music. It’s a bit stiff as it is being rendered by a computer (as opposed to being played by a human (which it could be)), but gives you the picture.

Yet another stupid Rock and Roll article

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For years I’ve gnashed my teeth while reading idiotic articles that present the history of rock and roll through the lens of punk rock. According to these authors, rock was born a free and rebellious movement, was co-opted by corporate America in the 70s, tried to wrestle free via the punk and grunge movements (insert tear stained worship of Saint Cobain here) and was then finally put to death. These authors never concede that many forces have affected Rock through its history and they certainly never concede that punk rock is – by and large – absolutely worthless dog feces disguised (poorly) as music.

As such, it was quite a pleasure to come across one of these articles and find that it is almost universally panned in the comments section. I can only imagine the young author thought he would achieve some degree of acclaim by parroting the talking points of his Sociology 101 professor but instead found himself mocked and humiliated by his peers. I only pray that such a virtual ass kicking leads him to experience a lifetime of sexual inadequacy.

You can read the piece here: How Technology Killed Rock And Roll. I’ll highlight some of the great replies.

“This is the least cohesive article I’ve ever read on MTT.

Really? Rock n’ roll is dead because of technology? Really?”

“Oh noes! You’ve pushed at your straw man with all your might, and now it’s fallen over.”

“Sorry but this article is complete and utter nonsense,”

“We need a timeline on public announcements that rock and roll was dead, starting maybe in the 1950’s, when it was about to be replaced by trad jazz.”

And on and on…