Virtual Music: Computer Synthesis of Musical Style

Description:

Virtual Music is about artificial creativity. Focusing on the author's Experiments in Musical Intelligence computer music composing program, the author and a distinguished group of experts discuss many of the issues surrounding the program, including artificial intelligence, music cognition, and aesthetics.

The book is divided into four parts. The first part provides a historical background to Experiments in Musical Intelligence, including examples of historical antecedents, followed by an overview of the program by Douglas Hofstadter. The second part follows the composition of an Experiments in Musical Intelligence work, from the creation of a database to the completion of a new work in the style of Mozart. It includes, in sophisticated lay terms, relatively detailed explanations of how each step in the process contributes to the final composition. The third part consists of perspectives and analyses by Jonathan Berger, Daniel Dennett, Bernard Greenberg, Douglas R. Hofstadter, Steve Larson, and Eleanor Selfridge-Field. The fourth part presents the author's responses to these commentaries, as well as his thoughts on the implications of artificial creativity.

The book (and corresponding Web site) includes an appendix providing extended musical examples referred to and discussed in the book, including composers such as Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Debussy, Bartok, and others. It is also accompanied by a CD containing performances of the music in the text.

David Cope is a composer and Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of Virtual Music: Computer Synthesis of Musical Style (MIT Press, 2004).

 

Table of Contents:

Preface
	The CD
I	Fundamentals
1	Virtual Music
2	Staring Emmy Straight in the Eye -- And Doing My Best Not to Flinch
3	Response to Hofstadter
4	Composing Style-Specific Music
5	The Importance of Patterns
6	Structure
II	Processes and Output
7	Databases
8	Analysis
9	Themes and Variations
10	Interface
III	Commentary
11	Composition, Combinatorics, and Simulation: A Historical and Philosophical Enquiry
12	Experiments in Musical Intelligence and Bach
13	Dear Emmy: A Counterpoint Teacher's Thought on the Experiments in Musical Intelligence Program's Two-Part Invention
14	Who Cares if It Listens? An Essay on Creativity, Expectations, and Computational Modeling of Listening to Music
15	Collision Detection, Muselot, and Scribble: Some Reflections on Creativity
16	A Few Standard Questions and Answers
IV	Response and Perspectives
17	Response to Commentaries
18	Perspectives and the Future
	Bibliography
	Appendix A Mozart Databases
	Appendix B An Experiment in Musical Intelligence: Mozart Movement
	Appendix C An Experiment in Musical Intelligence: Mozart Reject
	Appendix D Virtual Music
	Appendix E The Game Key
	Index