Music generated from photos

”He who invents a computer program by help of which anybody can produce music, will soon be as rich as Bill Gates.”
(Leif Segerstam,composer and conductor, Suomen kuvalehti 6/2003, translation by LG)Synestesia Software is that kind of a computer program. The prototype already exist, what is missing are products for different platforms. LAURI GRÖHN

”You never know who made it. With this generative music that I played you, am I the composer? Are you if you buy the system the composer? Is Jim Coles (?) and his brother who wrote the software the composer? — Who actually composes music like this? Can you describe it as composition exactly when you don’t know what it’s going to be?”
(Brian Eno)

Most philosophers of music think absolute music has no semantics. The noun ”cat” refers to things called cats but sad music has nothing to refer to. Sad people walk slowly and sad music is slow but that is only an isomorphism or a cliché. Pictures on the other hand have semantics. The mapping from pictures to music is always more or less artificial, there is an infinite number of possibilities. LAURI GRÖHN

”Meanwhile the evolution of computer music in and for itself, as a purely electronic art, is likely to be happening less in great institutions than living rooms, and to be contributing to a rebirth of domestic music as a creative art, with many millions of composerspursuing their own fantasies, and communicating with others throught computer networks.” (Paul Griffiths 1995, Modern Music and After)

Before concert halls and public concerts were born, all music was home music. LAURI GRÖHN

One interesting tool for research (and fun) idea as an application of Synestesia method: Snapshot Music. What you see is a camera lens and loudspeakers on a side of a box. If the camera detects some change on the view the system will wait until the view is nearly static and then the system will generate music using up to 16 instruments and after a few seconds one can listen to the music. The piece will last about one minute and the process will start from the beginning. This tool could be used for experimental musicology in many ways and for music therapy for example. LAURI GRÖHN

PARIS (30.12.2002) — Just as IBM’s Deep Blue showed the world a computer can play chess as well as a human master, Eduardo Reck Miranda, a researcher for the Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc., aims to demonstrate a computer program able to compose original music. So far, neural networks have succeeded in imitating distinct musical styles, but truly original compositions have remained elusive. Miranda is tackling that problem with an orchestra of virtual musicians called agents that interact to compose original music.
(R. Colin Johnson, EE Times )As far as I know professor Miranda has not been able to demonstrate any programs composing original music. Synestesia Software has been able to that for years! LAURI GRÖHN

It is a well known fact that some of the most original moments in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony have been the result of printers’ error. Also the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara has reported that he has got some of his ideas when hitting a wrong piano key during composing. So it seems that live composers may use randomness or serendipity as a creativity tool. It is a kind of a paradox that computer music based on randomness has not been so successful. The Synestesia Software does not use randomness at all, all pieces are deterministic. LAURI GRÖHN