Written by: CYSOBlog
7/13/2010 11:52 AM

"People tell me they don't hear soul in the music," he says. "When they do that, I pull out a page of notes and ask them to show me where the soul is. We like to think that what we hear is soul, but I think audience members put themselves down a lot in that respect. The feelings that we get from listening to music are something we produce, it's not there in the notes. It comes from emotional insight in each of us, the music is just the trigger."

You know that moment when you are performing, or listening to, a piece of music and you get the feeling that your body has somehow defied gravity? Have you ever wondered why that happens? Do you think you could analyze it and create a formula? Furthermore, would you want to?

Composer David Cope has spent decades working on computer software that essentially does exactly that – analyzes patterns in music at an incredibly detailed level and generates formulas based on the compositional style of a given composer. The software can then “compose” music on its own. 

Check out this article in The Guardian and listen to the computer generated piece in the YouTube clip. What do you think? Does it move you as an original piece of music? Do you find it beautiful? Or, does it just sound like a generic, mixed-up copy of a lot of other composers (Rachmaninoff and Debussy for example)? Can genius be put into a formula or is there something else – something more mysterious – at work when great pieces of music are composed?

Trackback Print

Location: Blogs The CYSO Blog