from Hacker News

I For One Welcome Our New Robot Vocal Cords: Radical Computer Music

by vimes656 on 2/7/14, 8:10 AM with 34 comments

• by e12e on 2/7/14, 10:36 AM

  While not directly related to the article, but more related to the headline -- I was just catching up on some of what Beardyman's been up to lately:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPBM69nThkM

  Now, that's one example of what human vocal cords (with various degrees computer augmentation) are capable of. While the things discussed in the article may be interesting... the reference to vocal cords seems somewhat misplaced?

  [edit: I should perhaps clarify/highlight that the above video does not feature drum machines etc -- "only" sampling, looping and "warping". Easier to follow, is this video I like to call "I was hip-hop before ducks":

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39n4wow8fWE ]

• by hmsimha on 2/7/14, 10:43 AM

  Somehow, digging in deeper on this subject led me to another video (which I just shared - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7195652) of a player piano emulating human speech by reproducing the part of the spectral fingerprint within it's range. Eerie

• by pessimizer on 2/7/14, 3:47 PM

  I found this article very difficult to read, and while it talks a lot about procedural music, I don't think that any of the people it covers are making any except the "Birthday Song Crew", who are clearly geniuses.

  It did, however, introduce me to http://yaxu.org/tidal/ which is going to force me to finally learn Haskell.

• by illicium on 2/7/14, 9:16 AM

  TFA asks if a machine can sing, and doesn't mention Vocaloid?

• by Renaud on 2/7/14, 8:51 AM

  I love music and experimentation but I find those pieces portrayed there quite devoid of emotional content.

  I like the idea of procedural music being created automatically, but I believe that the end result still need to inspire and transport the listener. I have no doubts that we will be able to make some pretty convincing stuff in the future, and it probably won't be a lot worse than what's already playing in the charts.

• by dcre on 2/7/14, 2:00 PM

  For those talking about the lack of emotional content, I found that this video -- for Holly Herndon's "Movement" -- helped some of this work make more sense. Of course, Herndon's music isn't really "automatically generated" and features a lot of human vocal samples.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kanNN4RPrOf (NSFW, in most workplaces -- two dancers in underwear.)

• by bsaul on 2/7/14, 10:20 AM

  About just as interesting as automatically generated novels. A machine has no intention. It doesn't "want" to turn itself on or off and play some music.

• by shangxiao on 2/7/14, 10:12 AM

  Can someone translate this article into layspeak please?

• by faceface1286 on 2/7/14, 9:46 PM

  I feel like this article is procedurally generated.