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

[Marc Mouries]

On 3/17/2011 11:31 AM, Graham Percival wrote:
> 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".
You are mixing unrelated things. The analogy is about getting emotion 
from listening or watching the artifact produced. While i find 
electronic engraving useful, people find ancient manual engraving much 
nicer.


>   "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 just don't like this piece and it's out of tune. One vocaloid 
generated song I enjoy is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm2IQ0y2J0Q
but I much prefer this human version here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN4cLlIKnoA



> 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?
There is a college kid here who is playing in a quartet and started to 
include his own composition in their recital.  You could certainly do 
the same, create your own quartet and play your own composition.


> > 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
oh i know we will get there and i can appreciate the technological 
achievement and if that will help people to play the piano the better.
> 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?

I complain because it's more than a matter of taste. The impact is 
bigger than what it seems. It's like people always want to get the 
lowest price and 10 years later, the manufacture and their job is sent 
overseas so they can get the lowest price but now they don't have a job 
to buy anything. In the past you could hire musicians more easily and 
more frequently. Today people throw a party and they will play mp3 they 
copied from somebody else and later will wonder why they can't get a 
career in music.

Anyway, all tastes are in nature and we won't agree. So peace, enjoy the 
music you like and let's come back to making lilypond work.

-Marc