Saturday, January 19, 2013

Their A&R app said "I don't hear a single"

When music lovers don't like a pop song, they often use the word "formula" to express their disdain. If you have artistic integrity, you'll write from the heart instead of painting by numbers, dammit!

Alas. The music world is about to get a whole lot more formulaic. Computer scientists from the University of Bristol have invented an algorithm that can predict whether a song will become a hit.
The researchers used musical features such as, tempo, time signature, song duration and loudness. They also computed more detailed summaries of the songs such as harmonic simplicity, how simple the chord sequence is, and non-harmonicity, how ‘noisy’ the song is.

A ‘hit potential equation’ that scores a song according to its audio features was devised. ... The team found they could classify a song into a ‘hit’ or ‘not hit’ based on its score, with an accuracy rate of 60 per cent as to whether a song will make it to top five, or if it will never reach above position 30 on the UK top 40 singles chart.

So far this is just a bunch of academics who asked an interesting question ("What specific variables give a song mass appeal?") and found an interesting way to answer it. But it has implications beyond the scholarly realm. Potentially troubling implications.

Less innovation

Big record labels will jump on this technology if it works. Why wouldn't they? Historically, they've chosen new acts based on what they think will sell, and what they think will sell sounds like what has sold before. Nothing new about that.

But every now and again, somebody bucks the trend. Bob Dylan and Nirvana weren't putting out what the labels considered commercial music, but they got their shot because an A&R guy sensed that there was something special about them and convinced the higher-ups to give them a chance.

The algorithm can't do that. One of its limitations is that it only makes correct predictions within a given era—a hit from the early '80s isn't the same as a hit today. So if a new sound comes along, something with the potential to catch fire with a large audience, the program has no way of knowing that.

In an ideal world, there could be A&R people who do their own research when a new musical trend sets off their Spidey sense, and then feed their software new data when they're right. Maybe that will happen. Or maybe the big labels, eager for short-term rewards, will just replace their expensive expert humans with software.

I'll leave you to ponder which option is more likely.

Songwriting software

With the ability to predict what songs will be popular, how long will it be until software is actually writing the songs? How long before my fellow songwriters and I are replaced by a machine?

This sounds like the stuff of science fiction, I know. Still, artificial intelligence is getting better and better. And it's not an either/or proposition—there are intermediate steps. Before we have AI that can compose music and lyrics unaided, we may have ...
  • Hit-predicting software as an editing tool. Songwriters will create their own first drafts, then run them through a program to see what they need to change. This isn't the most attractive alternative if you want to express yourself and create something new, but it's highly useful if you're just trying to churn out a hit.
  • Songwriting AI that creates the first draft. Early software won't be able to produce a radio hit on its own. The lyrics will probably sound like a bad Babelfish translation. However, it might hash together something a human songwriter can tweak and build upon.

Wild, handwringing speculation, you say? Well, yes. And it's important to remember that the music industry doesn't control all the music. Thanks to the internet and cheaper recording equipment, it's easier than ever for new bands to gain an audience without the help of a label.

But as far as radio play goes, I really do believe this is something to keep an eye on. Technology gets better, and all sorts of things that once sounded like sci fi have become possible. Someday we may have computer programs writing our greatest hits ... and we won't be able to tell the difference.

Hell, the article I linked to is over a year old.

Maybe it's already happened.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Resolutions unresolved

On New Year's day, I thought about the things I planned to accomplish in 2013 and felt pretty good about them. Right up until the moment I realized that they were exactly the same as the goals I'd failed to achieve in 2012.

To be fair to myself, I made a tiny bit of progress. I didn't spend the entire year standing still. But wow, I'm not nearly as far along as I thought I'd be.

The good news is that a few days ago, I remembered a song I'd started last year. One about New Year's resolutions unresolved. With fresh motivation, I dug it up and quickly fixed the lyrical issue I'd been stuck on, the one that prevented me from taking it any further. Now it's almost done.

Once I've finished it, I'd better get started on those other goals. I can make the same resolution twice, but I can't write a song about it twice.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

The ghost of songs past

I really felt like writing this afternoon. I even had a nice little stretch of time to do it, while I was chopping up vegetables and meat for lunch. The problem? No ideas had taken hold. Usually I want to write because I've thought of a phrase or a rhyme or something else to build on. Today, what I mostly had was an urge to create.

I gave it a go anyway. Played around. And maybe one of my vague, half-formed ideas could've stuck and evolved. Instead, I let previous songs I'd written creep into my head. Lyrics I was particularly proud of.

My vague ideas fled as the ghost of songs past settled in. "How can we ever live up to those," they cried.

Intellectually I understand that songs are the result of so much work, so many discarded words, over such a long period of time. I remember what it took to assemble them, how much grunt work was involved. So why would I expect a new song to fall out of the sky, fully formed? I know better.

And yet, the songs I've already written can intimidate me. Too much distance between them and whatever new thing I'm thinking about.

At my next little stretch of free time, I'll have to try again. Remind myself that I don't need to produce a finished work of art in one sitting. All I need is to develop one tiny idea that is interesting enough to take root. One tiny idea that refuses to let go.