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

[Graham Percival]

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 10:15:46AM -0400, 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?

The thousands of people who listen to music created with Vocaloid?
I listen -- for pleasure, not for academia -- to music created by
computers almost exclusively.

That doesn't mean that I think that everybody should!  I mean, I
don't think that David would argue that everybody has a moral
obligation to enjoy accordian music.  I don't think that Trevor
would argue that everybody has a moral obligation to enjoy Gilbert
and Sullivan musicals.

I'm trying to give people more tools for musical creativity.  The
number of people who like music produced with this tool is just as
relevant as the number of people who like music performed with a
trumpet or bagpipe.  I think the world is big enough to include
people who play trombone or bass drum, even though I personally
dislike those instruments.

> Art conveys emotions which are the one thing that make us human
> and thus should be played by human.

"should be"?  Hmm.  "Art conveys emotions, and thus sheet music
should be engraved by a human".  "Fiction conveys emotions, and
thus all novels should be hand-written by a human."

Is LilyPond a good thing?  It lets composers produce high-quality
output -- but with a computer.  Does the sheet music lose anything
from automatic algorithmic placement of noteheads?  I don't think
so... in fact, I'd argue that LilyPond produces better output than
99% of humans could create on their own.

Same thing with computer-performed music, although of course right
now the "better than 99% of humans" is something like "Vivi
produces violin music that is better than 1% of humans".  I'm not
claiming that Vivi is the end of the road, nor am I suggesting
that anybody throw away their violin CDs!


As for *good* computer-performed music... it's not my favorite Miku
work, but can you honestly say that you feel no emotion when
watching this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Dqb6uJ8WY
(maybe you _can_ say that you feel nothing, but I can't -- the way
her voice catches on certain notes seems heartbreaking to me)

I mean, I get a *totally* different feeling from that work than I
get from this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3YOqUbhOQc

But the audio in both works was computer-generated.

Now, you might accuse me of "cheating" by giving links to vidoes
(rather than just audio), but I still pick up a different emotion
from each work even without the video.

> What's the end goal of such
> system? Can you describe in what is that helpful?

It's helpful because it gives "content creators" (being a generic
term for composers and performers) another tool to create music.

I don't have a string quartet at my disposal.  I have friends who
play string instuments, but I can't have them instantly perform a
composition that I'm working on at 2am.  And if I wanted to record
my friends and release the audio under a permissive license, I'd
need to warn them, get their permission, and then they might want
to practice their parts more (if it's going to be available to
everybody over the internet), etc.

Guess why I don't have audio recordings of my compositions on my
website?

> Are we one day going to only listen to robots playing music?

It depends.  What do you *want* to listen to?  Go listen to that!
Nobody's going to legislate that humans are not allowed to play,
record, and listen to themselves!

> > 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.

Then I guess you don't want to look at the roadmap.  :)
Win the Chopin competition by 2050!
http://renconmusic.org/about.htm


It comes down to this:
- new tool for composers.
- if you can notice a difference, and prefer human recordings,
  then go listen to human recordings.
- if you can't notice a difference [say, 10 or 20 years from now],
  then why complain?

Cheers,
- Graham