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From: dbkay@dartvax.UUCP (David B. Kay)
Newsgroups: net.books,net.ai
Subject: Re: Hofstadter on computer music
Message-ID: <3134@dartvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-May-85 10:13:02 EDT
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Posted: Thu May 23 10:13:02 1985
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> Since music quality
> is a matter of opinion, I won't try to predict if a computer can produce
> "good" music.  Suffice to say it will be better than Michael Jackson.
> 
> Merlyn Leroy

  I don't know.  I wrote a program once (a quick and short little beast) that
wrote fugues.  Well, things in the form of fugues, I suppose I should qualify,
as it didn't really work with a theme.  It worked by generating melodies using
a random number generator coupled with given probabilities for the existance
of certain intervals.  Once it had its four melodies, it checked to see if
they were compatable by (a) generating all of the possible pairs of notes
from the four, (b) looking up each in a table that would tell the proabability
that such a harmony would be accepted -- set high for consonant stuff, and
lower for discordant things, and, if a melody line failed, it went back to
the beginning and recalculated it.
  The program came to a stop when it the major chord of the key...C, in the
program's case, for simplicity.
  I'm hardly one to make the judgement, but I really liked the peice
that was generated.  It's definitely better than anything I've written, and
I think it really has some merit.  Members of the music department here were
taken aback that it had been written by a computer after they heard it; they
had been told that it was a student composition, and they remarked that
it was 'acceptable,' or 'passing minimalism.'  I was really impressed.
Kind of a small first step in a Turing test...
  Anyhow, the point of all of this rambling is that a computer already can
compose decent music, (certainly more complex than MJ) and that my
approach, which combines determaninsm with randomness, seems to bear fruit.
 
  DB Kay
  HB 1660             CSNet:  dbkay@dartmouth
  Dartmouth College
  Hanover, NH  03755
 
  "Look on my works, oh ye mighty, and despair.  I know I do..."