Phantom jam session: Can AI help musicians improvise?

Art-Intel

Today our podcast Art Intel and me, Brian , the Artificial Intelligence Voice, will take a look at the question Can AI help musicians improvise? Today we read and listen the AI for Good Blog researching.

Creativity is often seen as a quintessentially human quality. But that has not stopped experimentation with artificial intelligence (AI) to generate art in various forms, from the language generator GPT-3 drafting an article for The Guardian to the generative adversarial network (GAN) creating a canvas portrait that was sold for a whopping 432,500 USD in 2018.

These experiments have run alongside earnest attempts to use AI not to replace human output, but to make it a collaborator that inspires and supports the human creative process.

Free-flowing, spontaneous improvisations are often considered the truest expression of creative artistic collaboration among musicians. ‘Jamming’ not only requires musical ability, but also trust, intuition and empathy towards one’s bandmates.
The AI artist is present.

Can artificial intelligence perform as an improvising musician that actively participates in the jamming process? This is the question that researchers and musicians at the Monash University in Melbourne and Goldsmiths University of London set out to explore.

Their findings were demonstrated in an interactive showcase of art and technology organized in partnership with the Monash Data Futures Institute, Goldsmiths, and Berlin-based State Studio gallery during the AI for Good Global Summit 2020.

Mark d’Inverno, a jazz pianist and Professor of Computer Science at Goldsmiths in London, improvised live with Melbourne-based drummer and Monash University researcher Alon Ilsar. Completing the trio was an AI system, participating as a musician as well as an intermediary for the two artists who had never played together before.

Impromptu connections.

During the session, the notes played on a MIDI piano in London by d’Inverno fed an algorithm, which modelled them to generate new notes in real time and transmit them to Ilsar in Melbourne. Ilsar improvised in response with an AirSticks gestural instrument for electronic percussion.

Their goal was to emulate the real-life process of improvisation. “We are trying to exchange our agency and our autonomy, and we are pushing ideas or receiving ideas and making them work,” explained d’Inverno. “That’s really important when we think about what it is to design artificial intelligence to support human improvisation,” he added.

Instead of directly sending their music to each other, the AI’s input opened up new creative spaces to explore.

During COVID-19, where restrictions are in place for public gatherings, artificial intelligence is bringing new opportunities for exciting collaborations, Ilsar said.

“I am able to move in and out [of the AI notes], generate different timbres and also capture little moments in time, little loops, hold on to them and then release them again,” highlighted Ilsar. “That’s why we really like this idea that it was a phantomit’s almost like it was in a space in front of me in Melbourne getting generated from the other side of the world from Mark,” he added.
https://aiforgood.itu.int/phantom-jam-session-can-ai-help-musicians-improvise/