I'd have to disagree. Classical music would be the LAST thing AI could do well. Hard to but technique, nuance, opinion, interpretation, style and the greatest utterances of our troubled civilization into an algorithm. Pop, dance, rap, blaalads....maybe. Classical and Jazz? Never going to happen.
Lmao, classical and jazz are the two simplest forms of music. Without any lyrics to generate its basically just generating some simple patterns in basic instruments.
> classical and jazz are the two simplest forms of music
Uh, have you actually listened to any of it? At all?
There are some non-Western traditional types of music I'd agree can have a level of complexity not usually encountered within the Western classical or jazz genres, but it's fair to say all over forms of Western music are vastly simpler in terms of harmonic language, tonality, form/ structure, instrumentation etc.
None of which I believe would make it harder for AIs to generate, as computers can manage complexity rather well.
What I expect AIs to not be good at is to conjure a truly original and distinct sound world significantly different to anything that's come before, but that still captivates audiences. Which is arguably what the greatest human composers & musicians have generally achieved, in any genre.
The "over" was a typo for "other" (hope that was obvious!). But that primarily refers to the pop/rock/folk genres.
One point I'd agree on is that it will take longer for AI technology to produce a satisfying simulation of the human singing voice than it will for purely instrumental music. In fact despite the leaps and bounds in speech synthesis I've yet to hear any sort of convincing demonstration of synthesized singing. But I can't see why there's any real reason it won't happen sooner or later.
Classical and jazz are actually the primary Western music genres where you encounter some deep music theory.
EG: Read something like George Russell's "The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization" (the basis from which modal jazz sprung, which includes one of the most famous jazz albums of all time, Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue"). Now add to the theory the ability to improvise around it as good as a Miles Davis level jazz performer can. It's not technically easy at all.
Even if other music genres are much technically easier, so much of music is the social experience anyways.
Take punk music. Though some parts got more technical later, much of it (particularly the late 1970s / early 1980s stuff) is, in my opinion, very technically easy; not too challenging to play, with very basic music structure (which was half the point, a return to rock's garage roots).
I'm guessing an AI can probably be developed (especially with today's fairly realistic sounding guitar VSTs) to make some "technically correct" old school punk rock, certainly much easier than it can be programmed to make "technically correct" modal jazz. An AI, however, cannot replicate the human parts, eg the social or community aspects of a music scene. Which with a lot of music is a huge portion of the point (certainly for punk it was).
You probably will be able to get imitation in the not too distant future. But a world where we just listen to imitations of 50s and 60s derivatives of bebop is a sad one. The most loved musicians are ones who are pushing things forward and don't just imitate Trane endlessly or whatever.
AI would need to be able to do something like create The Bad Plus in 1995. That's an even bigger mountain to climb.
We have the tech to be licensed (melodyne or zynaptiq for the polyphonic pitch data extraction), python libs for the analysis. Just needs the brains to execute it at this point...and someone to pay for this kind of compute
I don't think it is completely unreasonable in the future. But I'm personally good with what we've got in this style. We don't need another A Love Supreme. We've already got it. It was fun when Both Directions at Once was discovered, but it isn't like it was something that we needed in 2018.
People will still want to create their sound, and that'll lead to new music over time that isn't just imitation.
I have think you have defined the terms of battle. An improvisational jazz solo from a master vs one that is AI generated. I don't know this but I suspect that Monk had no idea where his solos were going when he started to play them. I like where they went, I'm just saying there were no directions.
