Bach vs AI: spot the difference
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- Опубликовано: 21 ноя 2019
- 'We're beginning to see an age where the code and the coder are beginning to separate. So, perhaps the code itself can really be creative and make something new.'
Will computers ever be able to write music like Bach? Popular mathematician Professor Marcus du Sautoy is here to try and answer that question by delving into the mysterious and intriguing world of artificial intelligence.
Catch Professor du Sautoy at our Bach, the Universe and Everything on Sunday 1 December 2019.
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In partnership with the Institute of Physics and the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford.
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The first piece just had some of intervals that I've never heard in Bach or in any music from that period really.
Yup. Dead giveaway.
I recognized that Choral so I knew which was AI. He wrote hundreds of those things. The one they chose happened to be one that is well known (I suppose). Maybe they should have chosen a less popular one
It sounded very interesting, very experimental for lack of a better word
@@TheBabelCorner parallel fifths tho 🤢
It was beautiful and Interesting
Listening to the first piece, I realised that that's what the AI in OAI stands for... Artificial Intrelligence makes Awkward Intervals. Anyway, the relationship between maths and music is endlessly interesting - the dice waltz game is an old example. If music is about communicating something deeper than words, then perhaps it'll be the way AIs first convince us they have awareness. That's a decent art movie concept right there...
AI neural networks are equivalent to Turing Machines. It's just computation. Awareness is totally out of the question.
First piece had parallel fifths - dead giveaway!
lol *giggles*
Lol
🤣🤣
AI almost never gets prepared dissonance and cadences specific to Bach’s chorales.
Spotted the difference. The first piece had strange pauses in unusual spaces, like it was a jumble of notes, a note-salad, whereas the second piece had a specific pattern that reminded a spoken sentence, a communicative arc.
Briefly, the first was babbled words, the second was coherent sentences.
I am no musician in any way; that's just how it felt.
nonsense.
you don't know what you're talking about.
It was still fairly obvious which one was by Bach.
Bach's piece is more "elegant".
The second was more pleasing ... the first awkward, unnatural. Perhaps later generations will not know, or care, about the difference .... interesting quiz, thanks ;-)
It was easy to tell the difference. The AI's music lacks direction.
I got it right, the first one to me seemed more like a mix of different pieces rather than a single piece. Something I would expect an AI trained on Bach's music to do, but not something I would expect Bach himself doing.
When you studied Bach and had a thorough musical composition training for years at a pristine conservatory you'll immediately spot the difference between the two. But I wonder, how long will it take to develop this AI systems to perfection? I think it can be done eventually!
I find it very amusing to see how well it actually already performs!
it will, in a faster rate than we expected too. Because AI doesn't need to rest, or sleep, it's working 24/24
Oh ja joh?
I mean, name me one piece by Bach which starts by a I-IV-V-I in a key a fifth above the key of the whole piece
It's I-ii-V-I actually...
That's actually not uncommon in Baroque music. It gives the piece a lifted quality, and the fourth degree of any tonality will seem more final. It's not a ridiculous thing to do. It's more ridiculous to go from a V/ii in the last fermata right to the tonic in the next beat--Bach would never have done that.
@@somethingtojenga I came here to say the same thing. You beat me to it.
I guessed correctly, but I can't say exactly why. The first piece just didn't make musical sense, or something. Although, having said that, I was a bit worried about the dotted rhythm in the bass line, last bar of the second piece.
It's the "comfort" of certain intervals (p4,p5, ect) that you're hearing, the ai was playing some whacky intervals (though they were interesting)
I like your reply because it quiet obvious for my ears the real Bach music is lack of musical sense at all while AI music just looks like AI never thought about sense at all while Bach did it a lot so Bach music is kind of musical nihilism while AI is just sounds without music to pretend. If I were tortured by this 2 pieces the second will be more amusing while first is more relaxing.
I guessed correctly, and the reason why is that in Bach's piece there are some passages distinctly carrying sentiment/emotion, while in the first piece I felt none.
@@andsalomoni they're both chorales played with fake MIDI instruments... seriously, some of the hindsight observations people are making are ridiculous haha it all comes down to theory, not emotion. It's a f***ing chorale for f*** sake, the best answer is that there's too sudden of a return to the tonic after the V/ii in the last fermata.
The second choral you picked, Christus, der ist mein Leben (Richter 46) is not composed by Bach. You should have picked an authentic one from the Cantatas. The whole point of the video is lost.
That Db though.
Is it not composed by Bach?
Please correct if I'm wrong, but a quick search on IMSLP shows it's composed by Bach (BWV 95)
imslp.org/wiki/Christus,_der_ist_mein_Leben,_BWV_95_%28Bach,_Johann_Sebastian%29
@@marcelo90z The original melody, the choral, was not buy b=Bach. it is the harmonization that it by him. There are over 100 of Bach's very standardized, 'by the rules' harmonizations of these pre-existing choral melodies so it is a very 'easy' AI task to learn and then follow Bach's rules for harmonizing a choral. In fact, many college students are taught just that as part of their understanding of music theory and harmony.
@@iiirdeyeheretik I agree. I think I'm going to look up this specific choral harmonization and see exactly what word he was harmonizing to use that Db. It has got to be for a very unusual reason.
Explanation: There are chorals that are in fact by Bach and released during his lifetime, e.g. all Cantatas. But a big portion was only assembled and released after his death. They all have a BWV and are included in usual sheet-collections. For a lot of them it is certain that they are not Bach pieces because the origins can be traced to another composer. For some of them it is quite certain that they are by Bach himself because the style is very consistent. For the others it is not very clear. The one in the video is from this last group. Here the style needs to be considered, which in this video leads to the conclusion that this is quite certain not Bach style (citation needed).
I was so hoping it would be the second one written by bach
first one sucked!
Haha, I was hoping the same because I so much preferred the second one. The first one just felt awkward.
Clear to me without having to analyze why, I simply could hear the difference at once intuitively
what really stood out to me from the first one was the absolutely jarring chord progression in the 8th measure, plus the last phrase in the Bach one is a lot nicer
It was already over considering there was no 'feel' in the first, but as soon as I heard the second bar of the second piece, it was beyond all doubt. The second last bar of the second piece also would have out it beyond doubt, if wasn't already in doubt earlier.
Yes, I spotted that the second piece was by Bach & not the first.
Thank you. :-)
There was no guesswork at all for this: either you recognized the natural pauses or not. I didn't happen to recognize the second music sample, but its pauses were indeed natural.
What is the BWV number of Bach's composition? Also, is there full version of the AI composition?
Came here while reading the book "How to get to great ideas" by Dave Birss. There is a mention of this in the book as Bach to the future.
I guessed correctly as well. It seemed to me that the Bach had much more variety and interest and the different ideas seem to follow on logically from the previous idea. Whereas with AI though there are different ideas, they don't flow logically, or make a pleasing whole. I noticed this a few years back when I listened to some AI-composed ragtime pieces in the style of Scott Joplin. In Joplin's rags there are two alternating ideas, and the second one always seems connected to the first (in a way I can't describe musically). But with the AI version it seemed just a formula - do something, elaborate of vary, then do something else. Both the ideas on their own are plausible as the AI can generate melody, but the connection between the two is lost. Until AI can do more than just generate a sequence of notes or chords, and take into account the entire structure of the piece and how it fits together as a whole, I don't think it will measure up to the real thing. It'd be OK for music you don't really listen to, like elevator music, video game scores etc.
Neither one sounds very good.
Bach's music contains twists and turns that you won't see coming if you don't know the piece thoroughly, and sometimes even if you do. I can't count the times when I noticed for the first time, after hundreds of listens, a fugue theme being repeated in a way that I'd missed on all previous listens, or doubled or halved in speed, or inverted. And that's just one example. But they always make musical sense. I'm impressed with the progress of AI so far in this and many other areas, but it isn't really quite good enough to fool someone familiar with Bach.
I haven’t studied much by Bach, but the giveaway for me was in bar 8 in the bass clef. The tenor jumping from E3 to E4 as the bass comes in at F3 didn’t seem like typical 4-part harmony at all.
I totally agree with the collaboration idea. We need to be led to new pastures in which to graze.
I think its really cool how a computer wrote a chorale that makes perfect sense except for a few parallels (but since it is instrumental counterpoint it's not such a big deal imo). Far from Bach but still pretty impressive.
the problem i see with this is that the AI models are getting sheet music as the data. But, that's not the music. It's only a visual representation of the music. The AI models need to have the actual music played by humans as soundwaves in order to get anything close to a more humanlike machine generated music.
I totally agree with the collaboration idea. We need to be lead to new pastures in which to graze
I am stunned! If only Mr. Sautoy had an ear for music, he would say to himself: "I can't go public with this AI chorale". And someone like that tells us something about music?
the first note of the sixth bar in the first piece gave it away for me, it would be very weird for a bach piece
There is a wrong note in the Bach Choral. The D flat in the tenor voice on the third beat of the second to last measure should be a D natural.
The second was clearly more ordered well contextualised with the whole... BUT - the code could be modified to make a code that resolves better back to the 1st chord or note.
I don't know which one was Bach or AI. But in the second piece I found that there were some "emotional" passages, I felt them.
[listened to the answer]
Ok, the second was by Bach. I'm glad I guessed it right (I was a little anxious). I think that this is the way to tell if a piece of music is human or artificial: only a human being can FEEL the music that he/she does. A machine can't. So a machine can't make a music that conveys emotions with full knowledge of them.
An AI program can't judge whether the music that it produces is good, because it can't "feel" the music. Only the logical aspects of human music can be reproduced by AI, since AI can extract "information" from the music fed to it, but can't know how it "feels" to humans. The more logical is the music, the more it can be reproduced by a machine. But always without true creativity, because information recombination is not creativity: there is no INTENTION in it. Bach composed his music with an intention, in which all his human dimensions were present. AI works with the logical dimension only.
the modualtions of the first piece were irradic , possible solutions for a modulation but irradic without the natural feeling for taste.
It was quite easy to detect that the first piece was by the machine. The AI composition was quite mechanical - so there is still quite a long way to go to produce something closer to the original. But what a cool experiment!
A great gulf between the two works. The first devoid of "wholeness" and was clearly not created by a musical imagination such as Bach had.
My prediction before completing the video: First one is AI, second one is Bach
Edit: Got it right. My reasoning is that the first one felt too "metrical" and strict compared to the mathematical yet fluid style of Bach.
Same!!
My preset-prediction, present before clicking, "it must be the second one, because placing BACH as the first contestor would be quite inconvenient.."
My reasoning for the second one being Bach was, it had a coherent musical story, whereas the first one was a jumble of random musical fragments that had been stuck together at random.
Creative people are starting to get stuck? I have quite the opposite view on this when it comes to music to be honest.
vikymoejoe I think creative people are generally will always find their way...because they are creative, obviously
I listen to Bach semi-regularly and it seemed fairly clear the first one was not him. His characteristic creativity and dynamism, so to speak, makes it impossible that something so mechanical would be from him :)
It seems like everyone, myself included, can figure out which is which with relative ease. This bot still has a long way to go haha.
I got it right, but I still thought the AI piece wasn't very bad. I could see someone using it as a springboard to create some pretty darn good music.
bach could probably spin out amazing fugues out of it
The way I see it:
The music created by AI is still based on the patterns and principles created by the composer in his work. Code music, yet new is still following the footsteps of the composer it tries to imitate. At the moment I don't see this kind of music becoming very popular, we already have very talented people creating music in the style of other musicians. That's how music styles are created and morph into the next generation of sounds. But I think as technology evolves it will become much more prevalent and exciting.
Ai can never do it since it is progammed and not spontaneous with creativity.
@@Sherlock245 For now...
@@WetaMantis No, it will never be creative, since it is only computation made on pre-existing music. No stirring of soup can be "creative".
I am sorry but your comments make me think that you don’t know the state of the art in AI. Old AI gave back what you fed to it. Now with self learning algorithms, AI learns just like humans do. Except AI can read and learn million times faster than humans, and AI can read and learn 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Consequently, AI is already more capable than many medical doctors. Music involves creativity, but AI is catching on that front also. (In short, your comments are not in line where AI is today.)
01:15 Is the Real Deal.. Only because I played that piece and we also did harmonic analysis on that choral piece in music school as a comp major.
Nailed it. Second one all the way. Those passing notes with harmonies that bordered on modulation. I'm not that musically trained (choir boy then went rock n roll). But you can hear the thought in the second one. Trying to trick the listener into thinking he was going left but then would go right. Right? Doesn't mean AI won't be able to be that nuanced. But it ain't there yet. (Looks at date. 3 years ago? Gulp!)
I really do hope you're right, but if there's anything that humanity has taught me-specifically Internet-enabled humanity-it's that "if it's cheaper, it'll make more money". More likely, this technology will be used to produce endless playlists of music for undiscerning listeners, while human composers try to find ways to pay rent.
That could be true if, the only work of composing is the writing down of notes. Great old composers like Vivaldi and Bach knew that the art of composition is nothing without the art, dare I say, genius of performance. The "cryptic" music mentioned in this video is Bach lending to the art of performance, not "code" it is allowing the musician to fill in the gaps and a good musician knows how to do so in an artful way that is faithful to what is written. Which is why this music sounds absolutely horrible on a midi organ with absolutely no expression.
There is only one way to truly "compose" music: to hear it in one's mind and then write it down.
No AI machine will ever be able to do so.
That's the capitalism
I guessed it too. It is most obvious when you read along and see that what sounds like a 4/4 is actually a 3/4. For example in the last bar, Bach would never have a dominant on beat 1, followed by the tonic on beats two and three.
Got it right #2 was J.S. Bach
But why though? The only difference I could find was the presence of a quarter rest in the second example. There had to be a purpose behind that rest.
@@1685Violin measures 2 and 8 are off. Measure 2 has a large jump after the fermata, measure 8 has a tenor jump from A to E then to an octave E and the harmony in it sounds off too. The alto jumping an augmented 2nd and the bass playing an F again on the 3rd beat. I could probably go on with other things.
I got it right too immediately, by the way.
@@c.contrafactum584 There is indeed a problem here, the difficulty of the realization is due to the return too fast on the fifth degree (V-IV-V ?), a perfect cadence in A major would have been the solution.
@@laurentp.2086 yeah, in the AI example it kind of sounds like a renaissance cadence
In number 1 heard a sour note, it's second stanza 3 measure.
Got the right answer, I heard something weird after the fourth fermata in the first one and sure enough it goes from a V/ii in the fermata to the tonic lol Bach would never have done that in the final leg of a chorale.
First one was clearly a computer to my ears.
I went for the second piece , because it sounded to me more 'organic' than the AI-version.
There were some very weird dissonances that didn't seem to follow the logic that we expect from bach in the first example. For the second example, that phrase from after the first fermata to the second was just screaming bach.
This whole thing becomes a bit less cool when one considers that whatever musical knowledge is expressed by the AI in question was put in there by the programmer that designed its pattern recognition algorithm and its “jumble and restate” algorithm. We are nowhere near AGI, and it is logically impossible for us to get there via deep learning software.
I think the first versions of AI are going to be like very advanced tools for people to use. Overtime it could evolve into something much more intelligent than a human or even a group of humans.
The second one is Bach's becoz He uses more than an octave interval between bass and treble.. so second one is Bach, More over the AI will follow the Main rules of Interval so it doesn't have an interval More than an octave..
2nd one is more decorative, a Baroque feature
Guessed correctly had assumed the results would be the opposite abs the first one was basically Bach trying new techniques and it was selected to confuse listeners
I guessed right, although there were doubts. Artificial intelligence is constantly improving at an alarming rate. There is nothing good in the fact that he will become much smarter for many people, this may threaten to lose his own value as an individual.
Well, I cheated: I recognized the second as being by Bach because I've played it before!
The second one is more alive.
The ending of the second piece is Bach
The challenge was easy: this AI algorithm is not state of the art and reveals itself very soon. But even the best AI algoritms that try to replicate the Bach style will sound unnatural after a short while. This happens because deep learning systems are great at pattern recognition, but they work only in relatively short sequences of notes. They may eventually produce a few bars of melody that sounds remarkably good, but they cannot (for now?) fit this melody in a structure such as the one we expect on a classical music piece. Jazz is a better material for this kind of early AI algoritms, because we don't expect a structure from a Jazz piece.
In the end AI will always be like "That don't impress me much/ You got the brains but haven't got the touch".
It just felt right to say that the second one is Bach. The first one was too "right" and too slow. Maybe that's something to enhance the model, but music needs some sauce sometimes or it doesn't click.
I’m glad it’s obviously the first one that’s machine learning. There isn’t really a recognisable melody in the first one. This vid is 4 years old at this point so I’m guessing the AI has it down now 😭
Got it right
The second piece is talking, it says something. First one is just blabbing as if just practicing it all. No human would write that. In part it looks like a mistake even, a slightly more complicated expression than what you really need. So... Bach is Bach is Bach.
The AI didn't pay any real attention to the phrase structure or direction of the music
got it correct...phew, close one :)
Not ‘opportunity for AI to kick us out of comfort zones’ but to ‘kick us out’ completely
I got right from the first bar of the bach-choral but was very irritated with the d-flat at the end of it, not having the text and context which would explain this otherwise harsh minor borrowing. The first is not that bad. I need an A.I. which can spit away all 45 Orgelbüchlein-Textures on all actual melodies of the Evangelische Gesangbuch, but please in a convincing Bach-style. That would be a good start. As give away, I accept these melodies in Reger-Bach-choral style.
I could tell pretty easily, but my dad was a music theory professor and he taught me to recognize some of that stuff. Still… if you just TOLD me it was by Bach, I’d probably believe you.
Monteverdi managed to renew musical practice without AI...
Knew it! The harmonies were all wrong to be Bach. Some chords were held where Bach would pass through to somewhere else. But the final cadence was very Bach. It composes as well as I do when I'm trying to imitate Bach, and does it in a billionth of the time.
Got it right here. I am a composer
Creative people will use new inventions to their advantage to create new art forms. Creativity begets creativity!
Some harmonies in the first example are very weird and unpleasantly dissonant and not fitting into the melody.
It is very obvious, even without listening to the sound and looking at the score, you can know that the first song is definitely not written by Bach. （I am a music student)
Não me enganou.
I mean making a program that rearranges some notes in a very regular type of music...doesn't impress me much.
I liked the first one better so naturally I chose the 2nd one to be the real Bach and I was right.
I got the right answer!!!!!! Ai can never play like bach.🤤
The number of people here in the comments employing hindsight exaggeration is absolutely staggering lol "ohhh, the second one lifted me up to the heavens and the first one was like GARBAGE." Jesus, people, they're both decent chorales, it's not as if the first one is like a child banging on a piano. It's not even that subjective, there were some weaker choices in the first but nothing that inherently broke any rules. I actually like the AI's choice to begin on the fifth degree and resolve it in the second phrase. I don't like that it went straight to the tonic after the V/ii fermata, though. Honestly--it's a 30 second chorale, if you can't be specific with that short of a piece, you don't know wtf you're talking about.
I got the 2nd one because ; 1) the tune was more "tuneful" than 1st piece, 2) there were recognisable Bach style trills/ornamentation 3) an unusual dissonant chord at the end of the piece that was resolved.
But overall, I agree, Bach I think is over rated, because a lot of his music sounds mechanical or mathematical, I much Prefer Mozart or Beethoven, pure expression and emotion in both those chap's music!
Yeah, overrated? Equal him, then. Hahaha always the odd asshole shitting on the ancient greats.
I could tell easily. The AI music sounds awkward, with harmony that just doesn't work in parts.
I'm still waiting for computer to match the magnificence of the simple little nuggets, 2 pt. 3pt inventions..Chocolate covered peanuts . Throw in Goldberg variations, Italian concerto. Put that in your microchip and smoke it
Not to mention Beethoven's "Pastorale", Stravinsky's "The Firebird", Mahler, Wagner...
@@andsalomoni Not my musical taste, but in the vein of piling on the dreaded computer, I will agree with you.
That was quite obvious.
No offence to JS, but this short, plodding chorale tune is hardly Bach at his best. When a computer can churn out something like the Brandenburg 5th, I'll be a bit more impressed...
a lot of nonsensical answers below that say more about responders ignorance of cadential sequences than anything else.
Musicians are drinking their own Koo-laid. The Musical Jonestown say, 2081?
Ha ha ha... I'll never drink AI...
I wish AI could create more JS Bach bc who, of those that like Bach, doesn’t want more. However, I’m afraid AI is dull and there is no captivating melody. AI gets the mechanics right but it misses the one thing that feels human. The emotion that is so subtly hidden with in JSbachs work. I am hopeful that AI Can rise to the challenge in the future.
First piece is obviously AI. It can never replicate Bach's compositional style and shouldn't even try. I do not consent.
Only people with no musical edication cannot hear the difference. However, it is most probably only a question of time before AI can make it better than Bach.
That was really interesting, but I was hoping it would feature lots of 'new Bach' by puters.
6:09 This sounds very stupid. When an artist gets fired from jobs cause a corporation can just type in a magazine cover or whatever in A.I. that was trained off stolen artwork by that same artist, it's a dystopian situation.
Don't know much about music theory or AI. I'm actually very jealous of Bach. He was the best student of Vivaldi without meeting his master, so I don't like him very much out of jealousy, but from the first measure on of the first piece sound like devil's calling to me. Bach has never been that bad.
My first Computer was a Commodore 64. Computers have evolved so much in my life time so god knows what theyll be like in a hundred years let alone five hundred or a thousand years. We're extinct already. That may not necessarily be a bad thing.. everything changes. Maybe we can go on the journey with them. We can say goodbye to these corporeal forms and all our personalities uploaded to a thumbdrive where we can live forever digitally ;)
Think about how much they’ve evolved over the past 10 years compared with previous 10 year periods. Not anything like as much, at least on the desktop.
tbh neither of them sounded like Bach to me lol. If the second one was a Bach composition, it clearly wasn't his best work.
You are not prepared to talk about that. Poor text about AÍ and worst about music. About Bach ? You missed the choral, man.
Bach did not write the 'Toccata & Fugue in D Minor'. Please don't use that piece to represent him. It is clearly not by his hand.
The first one was unmusical crap, so that was a bit of a clue.
Wow I could tell lol, The second organ sounded more live, the voices were more separated. The first one sounded like a really good virtual instrument. I turned the resolution up to listen more clearly. But the first piece of music being longer than the second was kind of a mistake or give away. AI is good at making small pieces from a large amount of examples but when the make bigger pieces they sound a little watered down. Like when you use more words than necessary to make up the word count at the end of an essay.
Is the hidden truth in the 'commas'? May AI find itself clashing with one of those mysteries such as happened to Pythagoras with the monochord? It tooks centuries before the western world could find a tuning system that the ear found pleasing. Perhaps we know too little about ourselves and that's why AI can't yet make 'pleasing' music.
The western Equal Temperament is designed to allow modulation between different keys using fixed pitch instruments, and it allows the composer to always avoid "unlistenable" dissonances whatever the notes used. This is the only reason why it has been created.
It is perfectly suitable for a "logical" composition method, like Tonality is (in fact lots of "Harmony" manuals exist), and is perfect for AI systems to work, since they are absolutely - and only - logical.
Listen to e.g. Indian Classical music, which is literally crammed with microtones, inflexions and emotional content, and you'll have it clear that AI will never achieve such a dimension.
I for one actualy wasn't able to recognise the right piece by very well knowing how Bach composes or how people composed in that period, but rather becouse I know how AI composes.
First, AI isn't all that good with writing endings, just like humans. But unlike humans AIs don't frustrate themselves with writing good endings and choose the path of 'least resistence', if that makes sence.
You will notice, the AI ended in a manner which is not different to other passages of the theme. That sort of creative change Bach did at the end, would be unlikely to get generated.
Next giveaway: The time signature. No AI ever would not choose some basic time signature and write it as one.
After listening to many pieces written by AI, I noticed that AI usualy has a continueas style. It doesn't compase after some grand idea, it doesn't go back to make the beginning fit the piece better, doesn't try to tell someting. It looks very broadly at what it has generated, very closely at the last notes it generated and then just goes on and on.
It's almost like Text generating AI, creating word after word. It 'thinks' like, "What is likely to be the best next note".
And there is some harmony thing which is kinda weird I'm not muwicaly trained enough to fully understand or explain.
2nd was more pleasing to my ears. Don't care who or what it was so I stopped watching after the samples were finished.