Category: LookingOutwards-10

“Rhapsody in Grey” by Brian Foo (2015)

Brian Foo draws from his fascination and interest in brain activity in “Rhapsody in Grey” by translating brainwave data into music. He specifically studied the brainwaves of a female pediatric patient with epilepsy so that listeners can empathize or briefly experience what may be going on during a seizure. I was intrigued by the distinctiveness of this project, as well as his creative approach to a scientific topic such as brainwaves. I admire Foo’s usage of his fluency and skills in programming to portray a personal interest(brain activity) in his own creative way(music). I found this project to be inspiring in the endless possibilities of programming and computational art.

Foo uses different variables from EEG brainwave data to computationally generate the intensity and fluidity of the rhapsody. He used Python to extract an excerpt from the EEG data, which he then calculated the average amplitude, frequency, and synchrony of. He then assigned instrumental and vocal samples in correlation to the calculations. The sounds were synthesized into a rhapsody using a music creating program called ChucK. Lastly, he used Processing, a visual programming language, to generate the visual waves that play with his music in the video above.

You’re able to see Foo’s artistic sensibilities in the final work in the sound samples he chose as well as connections he made to the EEG data. For example, he raised the pitch of string instruments during higher frequencies, while adding louder sounds for higher amplitudes. The connections he makes between his calculated algorithms and sound samples are representative of his interest in the human subject, as well as his artistic priorities and decisions.

“Rhapsody in Grey” by Brian Foo (2015)

The project I chose is called Amper Score by Amper, a company consisting of a team of engineers, musicians, and composers that have worked on many movies and television shows. The idea for this project arose from many people within film and other industries being frustrated by the process of obtaining stock or precomposed music, including finding the music, getting over the legal and financial hurdles, and the lack of customization. Amper’s solution is an AI composer that writes and composes unique royalty free music. There are two workflows: one that allows you to work quickly and another that allows a deep customization of the music. The simple workflow requires the user to input the style of music, mood, and length of the song and the AI will generate a song in seconds, while the more advanced workflow allows for changes in tempo, instruments, and more. This allows businesses, films, and more to create originally composed music that is unique to them. Amper’s AI is built from the ground up and utilizes a massive dataset created by an internal team of composer-developers. Rather than employing an approach that limits contextual awareness and the ability for Score to collaborate with its users, Amper’s data team describes every facet of music, including genre, mood, and instrumentation. What I admire about it is that it is something that anybody could use and the luxury of original music for any business or film suddenly becomes much more accessible to those that wouldn’t have had the money or resources before this tool.

Artificial intelligence researchers have made huge gains in computational creativity and there have been a number of artists that employed computational algorithm to produce albums in multiple genres, such as scored films, games and smartphone apps. 

David Cope, a professor at California Santa Cruz, has been exploring the intersection of algorithms and creativity for decades and he is specialized in what he terms algorithmic composition which is essentially computer-authored music production. He writes sets of instructions that enable computers to automatically generate complete orchestral compositions. His algorithms have produced classical music ranging for single instruments arrangement all the way up to full orchestral music and it is really hard to believe that the music is composed through a computer. 

I really admire this project “Bach style Prelude 29 Emmy Cope”, which he has let the computer to study the composition style of Bach. As you can hear, the final melody that the AI algorithms generate is an accurate representation of Bach’s composition style and some parts of the AI-generated music have created some unexpected beautiful melodies which is totally based on Bach’s composition techniques. The biggest advantage of the AI algorithmic music composition is perhaps “Algorithms that produce creative work have a significant benefit, then, in terms of time, energy, and money, as they reduce the wasted effort on failed ideas.” said Cope. 

The project related to computer music I chose to focus on is called Tune Table produced by a group of researchers Anna Xambo and Brigid Drozda. Tune Table is a tabletop, game like interface that is meant to teach users computer science related topics by allowing them to program their own musical compositions. Using blocks of code that utilize computer science elements like loops, users combine the blocks to make unique songs; when each block of code is placed on the table, cameras under the table interpret the block’s imprint on the bottom and output auditory and visual feedback. I like this project’s goal of utilizing music to teach computer science because it’s a fun way to learn something that is very mathematics based. I think the creator’s original goal of finding a link between computer science and musical outputs was achieved. The link to the paper describing the work can be found here.