What Artificial Intelligence Taught Me About Music

we’re gonna do a little thought

experiment

imagine if in 1950 cats started getting

smarter

smart that by 1955 they were able to do

advanced math

and then by 2020 they could fly

airplanes run accounting firms

deliver millions of letters every second

connect us with our friends and family

from around the globe

and operate our most advanced weapons

if we heard music written by a cat

composer even if it was

really terrible music we would

acknowledge that the very fact of the

cat writing music is significant

now you can probably see through my

metaphor and realize that i just

described the journey of complex

artificially intelligent technology from

1950 to today

at the risk of disappointing cat lovers

in the audience felines can’t actually

write music

but complex artificially intelligent

technology can

and these kinds of cats already write

music that would fool you into thinking

it was written by a human

maybe not like the most talented of

humans but it’s still a milestone

but will cats ever be able to write

music with emotion the kind of music

that moves us the kind of music that

stirs us

the kind of music that might be your

favorite song

the answer seems obvious right of course

complex artificially intelligent

technology

can’t write music with emotion in order

to do that

it would have to have feelings that’s

what i thought anyway

but to be sure that complex artificially

intelligent technology can’t write music

with emotion we have to answer one

simple question and that question is

where does the emotion in music come

from

now i’ve been a composer for about 20

years

and i never thought to ask this most

basic question about what i do

and how i do it and maybe even why i do

it i never thought to ask this question

until i collaborated

with complex artificially intelligent

technology

i’m going to tell you the story of what

i learned by thinking about

these types of questions through three

pieces of music

the first one is hallelujah a song that

probably everybody has heard at one

point or another when leonard cohen

first played hallelujah for the

president of cbs records

the stoic middle-aged exec executive

broke down weeping because he knew that

he had just witnessed the birth of a

classic

i’m just kidding that never happens that

has never ever happened in the history

of music

what he said was we’re not releasing it

lenny it’s a disaster

cohen was eventually able to release it

on an independent record label

and 19 years later hallelujah found its

way into the mainstream

when it was featured in the animated

classic shrek

it became a pop standard when kids

started singing it as these things

typically do which is

funny because it’s a song about sex the

rejected leonard cohen album that it was

on was called various positions

someone come back yeah that’s funny it’s

weird it’s a weird song it’s a weird

song it’s a weird album

so we’ll come back to hallelujah in a

moment the second piece in our story

was a collaboration with a cat using

complex artificially intelligent

technology i finished schubert’s

unfinished symphony

in order to do this i had to teach a cat

how to sound like schubert now the piece

has been performed and recorded by

orchestras around the world which i

think attests to the fact that we got

some really interesting results

how much it sounds like schubert is

probably a subject for another talk

but the interesting question for today

is how do you get a cat to sound like

any composer

um and the answer is you show it a lot

of music like hundreds maybe thousands

of hours of music

and hope that it figures out what music

is what style is

and creates more of it this is what the

computer scientist told me anyway

and when i thought about that i thought

why are we asking cats to decode

music why don’t we just tell them what

music is and then

let them use all of their processing

power instead of having to calculate we

can let them use it to compose

and maybe that will help them get closer

to that emotional paradigm that we’re

shooting for

and that leads to the next obvious

question which is

well what is music and you think that as

someone who spent half a lifetime in the

study of the subject

i would have the answer to that question

on the tip of my tongue but the reality

is after 40

000 years of human music making we’re

still unable to define it

the best definition we have the one we

use today comes from a 20th century

composer named edgar varese

who was asked by a reporter maestro what

is music

ferez summoned all the gravitas he could

and in a

somber voice said music

is organized sound

now if you don’t think about that too

much it sounds very profound

but if you do think about it it leads to

some really absurd conclusions and

the next uh the next piece in our story

is um

one of those conclusions it’s called

thought experiment infinity and i’m

gonna show you the sheet music on this

uh

screen there it is okay i was a little

short but that’s okay i’m gonna explain

it

so for those of you who can’t read music

um well actually you know everyone can

read music but for those of you who

don’t read music let me explain

it starts 13.8 billion years ago with a

big bang represented by a note with an x

then it moves on to a rest one measure

of rest which is repeated

at an infinite tempo for an almost

infinite amount of time

and this rest is repeated until there’s

a cue now normally a queue

is like a nod from a conductor or the

guitar player does one of these or the

pianist stands up

but in this case the cue that stops the

repeat is the penultimate moment in the

universe

at which point you move on to the last

note another note with an x which

represents the end of time i’ll show it

to you again now that you know what it

is

so the piece is all of the sounds

in between the two x notes which means

that the piece is all of the sounds in

the universe

and in time organized in musical

notation it can even evoke emotion

if not awe at the sheer grandeur

of my musical accomplishment frustration

confusion and disappointment are also

emotions

music is organized sound leads to the

absurd conclusion that music

is everything i thought if i could

answer the question what is music that i

could make the perfect cat composer

but in researching the question and then

researching

works of musical epistemology from

throughout the ages and

definitions by plato that were later

refuted by definitions by socrates that

were later refuted by

schopenhauer and meta definitions all

this crazy philosophy and

interesting thoughts by really

interesting people i realize that

questions like what is music

don’t have answers at least not single

answers

they’re just great questions a great

question makes you think that the answer

is on the tip of your tongue

but when you try to articulate it you

realize that you can’t

and that’s because a great question is

not a request for information it’s not

what time is it or where’s the bus or

donde la biblioteca

it’s an invitation to contemplation

and it’s an invitation to discussion and

it’s an invitation to connection

a great question is an invitation to

connect with all the people who came

before you

who’ve thought about great questions and

written their thoughts down so

articulately

that you can question them even today

and get answers

it’s an invitation to connect with the

people who will come in the future the

people who you will never meet

who might think sitting in their studio

or whatever a studio is 100 years from

now

what is music i’d like to know and think

that they’re alone in the universe for

asking this question

but realize that from plato up to me

up to them this question has been asked

throughout time um and

that’s they’re not alone they’re part of

the biggest human community that um

that has ever existed the human

community of ideas the human community

of sharing ideas and the human community

of thinking

the people who ask great questions don’t

always find answers

but sometimes you find new questions and

i found a new question and that the ques

that is the question that we started

with which is where does the emotion in

music

come from and that question does have an

answer

and that brings us back to hallelujah

hallelujah reminds me that one idea can

be many things

the story of hallelujah demonstrates

that the art we make

can sometimes take a while to resonate

and that the composer’s intention

in this case the composer of the album

various positions

is not always what the audience

perceives

but the song itself reminds me of my

friend’s wedding

they were high school sweethearts who

got married after 40 years and i played

hallelujah for them as they walked down

the aisle

these ideas and the emotions that i’ve

attached to them are the content of

hallelujah for me but that’s not the

content of hallelujah for you

it’s not the content of hallelujah for

the millions of people who know and love

the song

hallelujah invites us to feel feelings

associated with many different personal

stories

all at the same time stories of the

song’s composer

leonard cohen never knew

music is emotional not because composers

make it so but because music

acts like a mirror so to answer the

question where does the emotion in music

come from

the emotion in music comes from you

there is no reason why a cat cannot

create music

that reflects our deepest and most

sincere feelings back to us

does this mean that complex artificially

intelligent technology has feelings

no it means that we have feelings we

have enough feelings to connect with

anything we have enough feelings to

animate any idea

it took 19 years for hallelujah to

transform

from an obscure rejected vaguely

prurient

disaster into a pop music standard

maybe the next hallelujah has already

been written by a cat

and we haven’t heard it yet until we do

and until we attach our emotions to the

song

it’s just organized sound thank you very

[Applause]

much