Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music

[Mark Knoop]

At 10:15 on 17 Mar 2011, Marc Mouries wrote:
> This is intellectually interesting but the question is not "who
> deserves to create good music?" but rather "who wants to listen to
> music made by someone that does not practice?" and who wants to
> listen to music played by a computer?

I don't really see the difference between a computer in this instance
and an instrument. Any instrument, other than the voice, is a degree or
more removed from the musician playing (==programming) it. The question
could be, and perhaps was when the harpsichord was invented, asked: "who
wants to listen to music played by a machine?"

And if your argument is that the musical decisions are not taken in
real-time by the performer/programmer, then what of recordings? They
convey the emotions of the performer at the time the recording was made.

> >  Where *will* the limits be, or where *should* the limits be?
> 
> Yes very good question. One thing that comes to mind is that I don't
> want to arrive at a point where musician will be teaching computers
> to play instead of learning to play themselves.

Of course physical knowledge of the instrument and experience affects
performance and interpretation of music, but is that always necessarily
a good thing? Is it not, at the very least, an interesting idea to see
how an interpretation might develop with _different_ technical
obstacles? Vivi's player doesn't have to worry about nailing that shift
up to fis'''' and so can think about it's musical placement without the
constraints that are necessitated by that physical problem.

-- 
Mark Knoop