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Computers compose personalized music » PopMatters | News and Commentary | PopWire

Stephen Thaler developed a computer program that generates random strings of sound in Maryland Heights, Missouri, June 13, 2007. (Huy Richard Mach/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/MCT)

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by Tina Hesman Saey St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MCT) 25 June 2007Email (Related) Print (Related) Comments (0) (Related)

ST. LOUIS - Stephen Thaler is such a wretched musician his wife won’t even let him sing in the shower. And yet the computer scientist is releasing a CD of new music.

Don’t worry. Thaler didn’t compose it. His computers did.

Thaler’s computers at his Maryland Heights, Mo., company, Imagination Engines, Inc., are intelligent and creative enough to teach robots to walk, help a car decide whether the object it is about to back over is a child or a toy, create substances harder than diamonds and design toothbrushes. They work in a variety of different industries. In their spare time, the Creativity Machines, as he calls his computer programs, make the ultimate in personalized music.

Computers have composed music before, but those efforts were little more than high-tech mixed tapes. Most computer composers have been taught rules of music through extensive programming or by breaking down works of human musicians and creating new pieces from the parts, Thaler said.

Thaler’s Creativity Machines know as much about music as he does - pretty much nothing. He didn’t program them. He didn’t give them examples of music to study. He simply listened to sounds the programs spontaneously generated and offered a simple critique.

Thaler holed up in his basement for eight hours one day with his musical Creativity Machine and a Web cam. He turned on the Creativity Machine - an untrained artificial intelligence computer known as a neural network. The neurons in the computer brain are mathematical entities instead of brain cells. Thaler started the creative process by tweaking the mathematical connections between the neurons. That set off a cascade of calculations that were translated as sounds.

Thaler sat in front of the Web cam and listened. He indicated his likes with a smile and displeasure with a frown. A critic program connected to the music-generating program learned by watching the emotions play on his face what Thaler liked and gave him more of that. It learned what he didn’t like and gave him less of that.

“Anything that sounded like country music or garbage I discarded or gave a low score,” Thaler said.

He turned over the melodies generated by the program to Shawne Benson, a professional musician from Michigan. Benson acted as a conductor, pairing the melodies with harmonies composed by a separate Creativity Machine. She also snipped out sour notes and added a few finishing touches to make the music a product fit for publication, Thaler said. “Some of it was a flop, so we excised it,” he said. But the compositions are still 95 percent to 98 percent computer-generated.

The collaboration between man and machine resulted in a compilation of 14 songs in various styles, from a sitar-soaked tune that could have originated in India, to shades of a child’s music box, a Top-40 ballad, techno, a haunted house and even a burst of bird song. Thaler’s two cats particularly like the bird sounds, he said. They stalk through the house looking for prey when he plays it.

Stuart Schelp, a St. Louis businessman who got a preview of the music, was also amazed by the bird calls. He was talking to a business colleague on the phone when he heard birds singing across the wire.

“All I could think of was Steve’s music,” Schelp said.

Schelp and his colleagues who heard the preview began bombarding Thaler with suggestions of opening a studio where people could get music customized for themselves, or creating a computer program for use at home. Thaler says he wants to develop a commercial product, but the artistic endeavors take a back seat to bread-and-butter projects.

For now, the CD, titled “Song of the Neurons,” is available through the Internet music service Emusic, and will be available soon on iTunes.

Thaler realizes that music, like all art, is subjective and some people will never believe that a computer can be a great musician. He expects a mixed reaction.

“I can say, `Here’s my dog Fido and he’s playing poker.’ Maybe you’ll say, `That’s not so great because he’s losing,’ or maybe you’d say, `Wow! That dog is playing poker and seems to have some comprehension of the game.’”

Schelp said that he finds the music to be “a very pleasant sound” but the music is secondary to the fact that Thaler has taught his computers to learn and improve themselves.