http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne...cle6884631.ece#

"Emily Howell could be the next big hit in the classical music world. She has already received critical acclaim for her compositions and secured a record deal, with her debut album due for release next year."

I think that's a bit of a bold statement, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Not sure if I like it or not really, what do others think? The second piece played doesn't really settle on my ears very well. The first piece makes me think of Grieg or Liszt for some reason at first.

That's really impressive!
But the question that came to my mind was "why?". Why create a machine that will create music when so many people enjoy doing it? Isn't it more fun to create music than to create a machine that will create music?!
hmmm..obviously the creators of that program won't agree with me!!!

How peculiar. The first one sounds like Moonlight Sonata in its harmony, but somehow the progression of chords doesn't seem to have any narrative or emotion...It doesn't feel like it's going anywhere.

I'd be very interested to know what kind of musical criteria were programmed into Emily. I teach composition, and there are various dos and don'ts, but still, it's such a subjective process, and in order to give somebody an idea of precisely what to create, there'd have to be thousands of perameters....

Impressive, yes, but there's something missing there, that I feel only a human being can bring to compositions. The whole thing just feels a little 'cold' to me...

I haven't had a chance to listen to the pieces yet. However, surely the debate about how the music is created is academic. Ultimately, it is created by a human being as the computer only exists and has the capability to produce the music as a result of the input from a human. The music should be judged like any other - either you like it or you don't. I'd certainly want to avoid colouring my perception in thinking that it lacked emotion because it was 'produced' by a computer.

This is reminiscent of a movie I saw years ago, with Al Pacino: 'S1m0ne'. Of course, it isn't entirely the same idea, but as soon as I read the article, this is what I thought of! If I remember correctly, the movie didn't end too well... a bit of an omen, perhaps?

This is a very interesting idea, though. Things like this would definitely count as breakthroughs in the world of computers, but in the realm of music I don't think it'll be very successful. I might be wrong, maybe it will be a success, but to me music always been a reflection of somebody's feelings and emotions, rather than a composition based completely on logic and technicalities...

Its like the chap with the computer program that produces 'Bach' fugues or something similar.

Shirley, the quality of the output depends on the level of instructions given to the machine in the first place.

Haven't had a chance to listen to them, but I don't like the idea. There are still living composers! Will the Music GCSE course composition module turn into 'write a music composition program for a computer'? I think not...

I notice the last paragraph of the report mentions it contains a database of music. So I wonder if it actually creates anything, or just stitches together bits of existing compositions using some rules of composition? I'd be more impressed if it just had the composition rules and not the database.

Don't think I'll be giving up on Beethoven just yet.