Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!udel!princeton!phoenix!eliot
From: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: MUSIC and Neural Nets
Keywords: THANKS!
Message-ID: <11871@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 2 Dec 89 07:43:15 GMT
References: <882@cf-cm.UUCP> <11471@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <548@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu> <1120@cf-cm.UUCP>
Reply-To: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman)
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 28

In article <1120@cf-cm.UUCP> andrew@computing-maths.cardiff.ac.uk (Andrew Jones) writes:

;Finally, I have not yet received a posting by Eliot Handelman, except
;that Darrell Schiebel included at least part of it in his posting (things
;are V E R Y  S L O W getting through to us at the moment). Eliot Handelman
;is saying, I think, that non-musicians should avoid this subject area.
;One of the people who e-mailed me stated that he disagreed with this
;opinion. I suppose it depends what you mean by "musician".



Everyone can do, of course, exactly what they like.

My definition of a musician is "a person who tries to make a living
from his musical activities." This person was probably in training for
10 or 20 years, has to teach piano or theory to get by, etc.

I sometimes read papers written by people in AI that argue for the relevence
of their research because of potential compositional utility. This miffs me.
If the justification of research is that it generates music, then anyone ought
to be equally useful who can do the same, which includes countless numbers of
hard working composers who don't have the same access to National Science 
Foundation grants. 

On a music-theoretical, music-cognitive, music-perceptual front, there is
a ton of "research" floating around that is bloody amateurish from a musical
point of view, and I'm just wondering how it is that we musicians are being 
usurped in our own professional capacities by non-professionals.