Digital Donna Lee

 

Hey AI...Use this sequence of notes and assign the rhythms from Donna Lee. Here is the MIDI file.

This is something AI can't do, but humans have always been able to do it and make it musical. The row of notes is an isomelody (the color) and the rhythms from Donna Lee are the isorhythm (the talea).

If all AI is at the moment is the scraping of text and other data sources, I can't imagine the result would sound like jazz but could be interesting in its own right. It would be a derivative work, although the solo is mine. But how could it produce swing unless you tell it to, whereas humans understand that jazz sometimes swings, but not always. Moreover, quantized swing never sounds as good as human swing (even if you randomize it), and might return results in concert A Major as opposed to knowing Bb would be the better key. This is evidence that AI will never truly be embodied, even if we give it one. 

A few days ago I watched the recent Paul Simon documentary. In the first scene, a recording session with Voces8 is taking place. The sound of the choir is extremely moving and numinous, and I thought it was something AI could never do. But could it? What makes the sound unique is the ability of the players to sing in minor second intervals and that the intervals are perfectly tuned and not equal-tempered. Synths have always had the capability to produce perfect intervals (including thirds), which is what makes a choir sound unique. But the fact that a sound is produced by humans in a church setting makes all the difference--that is, if you know that. Otherwise, they are just sounds, and we can imagine the places in which they are produced. But again, what's the difference? We need to define what the differences are and hold on to those. But we capitulated to drum machines, sequencers, and samplers 40 years ago, yet people still expect to hear real drums and real instruments. High fidelity is still important, yet not important because people might get inured to "just ok", so AI-generated choirs will be acceptable. Technology can be a very slippery slope, probably beginning with Napster, when music became a free download and was unserious.

After watching the doc, I had to revisit one of my favorite Paul Simon albums, There Goes Rhymin' Simon. Nostalgia is so seductive, but alas, it can't be a panacea--which is one of the reasons that we need to make the best of AI with humans always in the loop.