I spot a melodica!
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I failed the test. I don’t want to give anything away, but I think I understand why. I had no problem (in my opinion) picking the best of the three tunes. (I may have been thrown off, too, by the stunning performances by the musicians.) As I understand it, there has been computer generation of Bach style compositions in the past, some of which sound pretty authentic.
Band-in-a Box has some composing functions, that I guess could be meaningfully used mainly for jazz melodies. BIAB has improvisation on chord progressions by professional musicians (“Real Tracks”) and more mundane midi instrument solo generation. For jazz players, at least, BIAB provides a context in which we can do some experimentation of our own. So if you are working on a tune, you can call up Real Track improvisation of, say, a guitar solo, or you can generate creation of a midi instrument solo. Some of these, especially the Real Track solos, are not bad. If you were expecting to be playing with a guitarist, for example, and working on a tune, you could generate alternative Real Track guitar solos and play along with them with accompanying bass, drums, rhythm guitar, whatever, while practicing on your instrument. You can mute or adjust the volume of whichever tracks you like in the process of working on the tune. You can also ad reverb.
I listen several times and for some reason I want to say B feels less creative. I do not know Irish music so I can only judge by feel. I am also wondering if the performance gives it a different feel from what is created artificially. Very interesting.
Melodica-MeAlan, which was your favourite one? One of those tunes is my all time fav! Does Band In a Box provide computer-generated material, or is it pre-made improvisations from humans?
It should be pretty much impossible to tell them apart, because I picked the computer ones from a huge selection. I only had a look through Volume 1, which in itself had 3000 computer generated tunes. And I think you’re right MM, the musicians performance adds a great deal. A lot of its in the style and ornamentation.
I can’t hear much difference — I think that because the computer began with common melodic information the computer generated tune is totally believable.
I got fooled on on that one. I have never investigated computer generated music, but have experimented with aleatoric music (music by chance based on the roll of the dice or other random number generator). If you build your model correctly, you can get some really melodic music that way.
Regards,
Lowboy
I chose B as computer generated. The one I liked best was A.
Band-in-a-Box has a “generate melody” function that is described in this video:
It also has a solo track band in its Mixer. Typically, to an existing tune or one you’ve entered and have displayed as a lead sheet with chords and melody you can have BIAB generate either a midi or “Real” solo track. There are piano tracks, for example, with Kenny Barron playing solo piano. If you have a tune set up to to accompany your melodica playing with bass, rhythm piano, and drums, the melody will be played by a midi instrument, and you can select a Real Track instrument to play a Kenny Barron solo. This will be Kenny’s actual playing, his actual piano sound and improvisation. I don’t understand the details, but the solo track is a composite of improvisational segments for common chord progressions that Kenny laid down for BIAB during countless hours in the studio. However much of that he did, I guess the engineers did the rest, and you can have it in any key you want. You can also switch from seeing the melody in the lead sheet window to seeing the scoring for Kenny’s solo. Midi solos can also be generated.
Lots of composers use BIAB, and I’m sure there’s a whole lot more to it than what I understand. But satisfying use of it requires getting a version with all the Real Tracks and Styles, which costs about $500 — a terrific bargain, however. And it requires an incredible investment of time and energy.
The site wouldn’t tell me the right song but I’d choose B. Why? Just because for my ears it is the most boring irish tune of the three without any surprising effects – if I was a program I would write it just like this…
I took the Quiz and didn’t get it right. The answer was C, As you point out not one tune isw all that distinct.
I think what tipped me in favor of B was discordance that is often characteristic — in tuning a piano, for example — of something that is done mechanically without the assistance of the human ear or eye. But I was wrong. I don’t listen to much Celtic music, but to me C does sound like it could be an imitation of what’s done in A. So I also considered C.
Although each tune is only 16 bars long, they edited the video so that we dint hear a full cycle of each tune, so really not that easy to assess!
The first tune, is actually one of my all time favourites. I used to listen to a guy play it on the accordion on youtube in the old days, and think how nice it would be to play it one day…
The full track is also on youtube:
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