Music Synthesis.

Muzzoid

So ton's of times we have conversations about automation in game art and what sort of impact it will have on our jobs.

I think it's pertinent to look at what's happening in the music world.

A few years ago we saw microsoft come out with the laughable song smith software. (WARNING EAR BLEEDING MIGHT ENSUE)
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oGFogwcx-E[/ame]

It's fucking hilarious, but it's just a precursor to what is happening now.

I saw this demo go up for a guitar pedal go up last night.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4484J3JhYGY[/ame]

Automatic synthesis of bass and drums from a guitar part in a tiny form factor. I actually want one of these because it looks fun as hell to mess around with and possibly use as a song writing tool.

Now comes the crazy stuff

https://vimeo.com/104488077

An automatic composing program that uses prerecorded tracks to compose music. I am not sure how well it actually does it in production, but if the video is to be beleived. For small productions, it seems like it wouldn't make financial sense to hire a dedicated music guy!

I think it's going to be very interesting watching the production music world over the next decade. While i don't think the band will every die out, because live music is too much fun to make, write, and dance to, this will probably have massive effects on the production music world.

Xoliul

Wow those are both very cool.
I wonder how well the 'keyword' as a seed works though, it depends very much on the original interpretation of the person who catalogued that stuff. Different people might not have the same associations. Then again, I can't really imagine much of another way of doing it.

I love seeing stuff like this though, wish we could get games that incorporated this kind of thing with story, gameplay, art, whatever.

oblomov

There was a presentation at GDC ('07 or '08 ) about the score in Spore which was entirelly procedural and reacting to the actions of the gamer. It was made using PureData (I think EA had to reimplement the runtime to include it in the game, because of licencing issues) and based on well known classical and jazz harmony rules such as Fux's contrapuntal rules. I tried it at home and managed to get a funny Bach-like fugue generator. It's definitely doable.