An Experiment in A New Kind of Music 282
waynegoode writes "Stephen Wolfram's Wolfram Research has produced an new application:
WolframTones-- 'An Experiment in A New Kind of Music'. It combines the principles in Stephen's book, 'A New Kind of Science' and Mathematica to 'instantly create unique music' in many different styles. They describe it as pretty neat as well as being scientifically interesting, and useful. After listening to some compositions and creating a few random ones myself, I must agree that it is. And anyone who has listen to the radio the last few years could certainly use some unique music."
Zamyatkin's We (Score:5, Informative)
Scary, scary idea. A paraphrase from it: 'Composition was once a sort of trance where slightly insane people wrote music down feverishly. Our way, based on mathematics, is much better. Regular, based on curves and graphs.'
All right overall (Score:2, Informative)
New? (Score:3, Informative)
Without anything approaching Steve Reich or any of the techno programmers of the last 20 or so years I don't see why this is interesting. They already have computers that can write music (see: Babyface)
Re: Wolfram (Score:5, Informative)
On pages 7-10:
Physics: "In the future of physics the greatest triumph would undoubtedly be to find a truly fundamental theory for our whole universe. Yet despite occasional optimism, traditional approaches do not make this seem close at hand. But with the methods and intuition I develop in this book there is I believe finally a serious possibility that such a theory can actually be found."
Social Sciences: "...I suspect that one will often have a much better chance of capturing fundamental mechanisms for phenomena in the social sciences by using instead the new kind of science that I develop in this book based on simple programs."
Computer Science: "One consequence [of this book's material] is a dramatic broadening of the domain to which computational ideas can be applied--in particular to include all sorts of fundamental questions about nature and about mathematics."
Philosophy: "But my discoveries in this book lead to radically new intuition. And with this intuition it turns out that one can for the first time began to see resolutions to many longstanding issues..."
There's plenty more where this came from.
Not music (Score:5, Informative)
Re:All right overall (Score:4, Informative)
reminds me of an amiga program (Score:2, Informative)
I think it was "Instant Music" from Electronic arts, but I can't be sure. I'd have to go into my attic to find the disk... and the Amiga.
Ok, the algorithm might me more sophisticated to generate something less apparently random noise, but I wouldn't rush out to buy the "music" it generates.
Prior art? (Score:2, Informative)
spreadsheet program for the Mac) :
'You see, any aspect of a piece of music can be expressed as a sequence or pattern of numbers,'
enthused Richard. 'Numbers can express the pitch of notes, the length of notes, patterns of pitches and
lengths.'
'You mean tunes,' said Reg. The carrot had not moved yet.
Richard grinned.
'Tunes would be a very good word for it. I must remember that.'
'It would help you speak more easily.' Reg returned the carrot to his plate, untasted. 'And this
software did well, then?' he asked.
'Not so much here. The yearly accounts of most British companies emerged sounding like the Dead
March from Saul, but in Japan they went for it like a pack of rats. It produced lots of cheery company
anthems that started well, but if you were going to criticise you'd probably say that they tended to get a
bit loud and squeaky at the end. Did spectacular business in the States, which was the main thing,
commercially. Though the thing that's interesting me most now is what happens if you leave the accounts
out of it. Turn the numbers that represent the way a swallow's wings beat directly into music. What
would you hear? Not the sound of cash registers, according to Gordon.'
Re: Wolfram (Score:1, Informative)
Sure, maybe someday computers will be able to write good music (and I'm not saying have it pump out a million songs and then have a human choose the good ones.) But this ain't it. So it does nothing to prove his theories.
Re:Too bad it requires QuickTime (Score:4, Informative)
To bypass all the javascript and all other shit:
Re:Missed Opportunity (Score:1, Informative)
Raymond did a somewhat better job of it too. You can still get the records.
If you want some generative music software with more depth and interest to it, check out SSEYO Koan Pro.
You can create complex shifting compositions, or even breakbeat tunes. It also allows you to define rules as to how melody and harmony are created.
To download the ringtone in MIDI format (Score:2, Informative)
1. Go to Tools.
2. Page Info.
3. Media.
4. Click on the link whose type is "Embed"
5. Click "Save As..."
You can then use iTunes or a program of your choice to change it to another format. Enjoy.
Papers where ? (Score:1, Informative)
Transparent cherry-picking (Score:1, Informative)
-IEEE Software
-Physica A
-Physica D
-Physical Review E
-Artificial Life
-Neurocomputing
-Journal of Difference Equations and Applications
-Journal of Molecular Modeling
-Journal of Integer Sequences
-Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing,
-Chaos, Solitons and Fractals
-Iternational Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos in Applied Sciences and Engineering (2004)
-Plant physiology
-Thesis written at schools like Columbia and MIT
You can disagree with Wolfram but it just makes my blood pressure rise when people essentially lie about the facts. And hey, just because the ideas are applicable in a broad range of unusual places like art is a good sign, not a bad one.