Category Archives: Music

Singing from memory shows most people can actually sing pitch perfect or very very close

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Psychologists from UC Santa Cruz wanted to study “earworms,” the types of songs that get stuck in your head and play automatically on a loop. So they asked people to sing out any earworms they were experiencing and record them on their phones when prompted at random times throughout the day.

When researchers analyzed the recordings, they found that a remarkable proportion of them perfectly matched the of the original songs they were based upon.

More specifically, 44.7% of recordings had a pitch error of 0 semitones, and 68.9% were accurate within 1 semitone of the original . These findings were published in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.

“What this shows is that a surprisingly large portion of the population has a type of automatic, hidden ‘perfect pitch’ ability,”

[…]

“Interestingly, if you were to ask people how they thought they did in this task, they would probably be pretty confident that they had the melody right, but they would be much less certain that they were singing in the right key,” Evans said.

“As it turns out, many people with very strong pitch memory may not have very good judgment of their own accuracy, and that may be because they don’t have the labeling ability that comes with true perfect pitch.”

Evans explained that true perfect pitch is the ability to accurately produce or identify a given note on the first try and without a reference pitch. […] scientists are increasingly finding that accurate pitch memory is much more common.

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“People who study memory often think about long-term memories as capturing the gist of something, where the brain takes shortcuts to represent information, and one way our brains could try to represent the gist of music would be to forget what the original key was,” explained Professor Davidenko.

“Music sounds very similar in different keys, so it would be a good shortcut for the brain to just ignore that information, but it turns out that it’s not ignored.

[…]

He noted that the pitch accuracy of participants in the study was not predicted by any objective measures of singing ability, and none of the participants were musicians or reported having perfect pitch. In other words, you don’t have to have special abilities to demonstrate this foundational musical skill.

[…]

Source: Singing from memory unlocks a surprisingly common musical superpower

Sonos releases new but hugely broken, incomplete app causing shitstorm

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Sonos launched a new version of its app this week, altering the software experience that tens of millions of users rely on to control the company’s premium home wireless home speaker systems.

Turns out, people really hate it! The response from users on Reddit, on audio forums, and on social media has been almost total condemnation since the app experience switched over on May 7. Users on the dedicated r/sonos subreddit are particularly peeved about it, expressing frustration at all manner of problems. The quickest way to see the scores of complaints is to visit the megathread the users in the community started to catalog all the problems they’re experiencing.

Sonos app
Courtesy of Sonos

Many features that had long been a part of the Sonos app are simply missing in the update. Features such as the ability to set sleep timers and alarms, set the speakers at a precise volume level, add songs to the end of a queue, manage Wi-Fi connectivity, and add new speakers are missing or broken, according to the complaints. Users are also reporting that the revamped search engine in the app often can’t search a connected local library running on a networked computer or a network-attached storage drive—they way many of Sonos’ most loyal users listen to their large private music libraries. Some streaming services are partially or completely broken for some users too, like TuneIn and LivePhish+.

Worse, the new app is not as accessible as the previous version, with one Reddit user calling it “an accessibility disaster.” The user, Rude-kangaroo6608, writes: “As a blind guy, I now have a system that I can hardly use.”

Source: Many People Do Not Like the New Sonos App

Also, they got rid of the next and previous buttons and you can’t scrob through the song in the small player. You can’t add all files in a directory in your Library at once to the Sonos playlist – you have to add them one by one. The shuffle is gone. You can’t re-arrange queues. The system loses speakers randomly. So basically, you can’t really use the app to play music with.

Tuesday May 14th there will be an Ask Me Anything (AMA) – I would feel sorry for the Sonos people taking the questions, but don’t because they caused this fiasco in the first place. It certainly is “courageous” (ie stupid) to release an incomplete and broken app on top over expensive hardware.

 

EU says music streaming platforms must pay artists more

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The European Parliament is calling for new regulations to ensure streaming services pay artists fairly. The proposal also calls for more transparency around how algorithms generate suggestions for which artists to stream and what tracks get the most promotion.

The proposed changes will be designed to ensure smaller artists are compensated fairly. Currently, royalty rates are set in a way that makes artists accept lower pay for the distribution of their content in exchange for visibility on streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. The members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are primarily concerned with introducing new legal frameworks to help support artists.

MEPs believe that the current way royalties are distributed is unfair. Current algorithms favor major labels and artists when providing suggestions, making it more difficult for less popular and diverse genres to get exposure. “Cultural diversity and ensuring that authors are credited and fairly paid has always been our priority; this is why we ask for rules that ensure algorithms and recommendation tools used by music streaming services are transparent as well as in their use of AI tools, placing European authors at the centre,” rapporteur Ibán García del Blanco of Spain said.

As part of this call for change, the MEPs want there to be more regulation regarding the use of artificial intelligence. The actual implementation of a legal framework by EU regulators might take some time to come to fruition. Similarly, UK regulators also raised the issue of pay fairness on streaming apps and even started investigating the effects of algorithms on listening habits. It’s no secret that streaming platforms account for more than half of the music industry’s revenue. Streaming represents about 67 percent of the music industry’s revenue on a global scale.

Source: EU says music streaming platforms must pay artists more

Suno AI – make amazing songs with your own prompts

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Suno AI is created by a team of musicians and artificial intelligence experts based in Cambridge, MA.

This machine makes the music and lyrics in the style you want and then sings it for you.

You get some free credits to play with but if you want longer songs then you need to go pro.

They keep copyright of everything generated when you use it for free, but under pro subscriptions you can sell the music it makes, under their terms.

It’s awesome!

Source: Suno AI

The Grammys will consider that viral song with Drake and The Weeknd AI vocals for awards after all

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The person behind an AI-generated song that went viral earlier this year has submitted the track for Grammy Awards consideration. The Recording Academy has stated that such works aren’t eligible for certain gongs. However, Ghostwriter, the pseudonymous person behind “Heart on My Sleeve,” has submitted the track in the best rap song and song of the year categories, according to Variety. Both of those are songwriting honors. The Academy has suggested it’s open to rewarding tracks that are mostly written by a human, even if the actual recording is largely AI-generated.

Ghostwriter composed the song’s lyrics rather than leaving them up to, say, ChatGPT. But rather than sing or rap those words, they employed a generative AI model to mimic the vocals of Drake and The Weeknd, which helped the song to pick up buzz. The artists’ label Universal Music Group wasn’t happy about that and it filed copyright claims to remove “Heart on My Sleeve” from streaming services. Before that, though, the track racked up hundreds of thousands of listens on Spotify and more than 15 million on TikTok.

[…]

It seems there’s one major roadblock as things stand, though. For a song to be eligible for a Grammy, it needs to have “general distribution” across the US through the likes of brick-and-mortar stores, online retailers and streaming services. Ghostwriter is reportedly aware of this restriction, but it’s unclear how they plan to address that.

In any case, this may well be a canary in the coal mine for rewarding the use of generative AI in art.

[…]

Source: The Grammys will consider that viral song with Drake and The Weeknd AI vocals for awards after all

This is like saying that any song with a guitar or any song with a synthesizer won’t be considered for a Grammy

Grimes invites AI artists to use her voice, promising 50 percent royalty split

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Canadian synth-pop artist Grimes says AI artists can use her voice without worrying about copyright or legal enforcement. “I’ll split 50% royalties on any successful AI generated song that uses my voice. Same deal as I would with any artist i collab with,” she tweeted on Sunday. “Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings.”

The musician’s declaration comes in the wake of streaming platforms removing an AI-generated song using simulated voices of Drake and The Weeknd. Universal Music Group (UMG), which represents both artists, called for the purge after “Heart on My Sleeve” garnered over 15 million listens on TikTok and 600,000 on Spotify. UMG argued that publishing a song trained on its artists’ voices was “a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law.”

Grimes takes a considerably more open approach, adding that she has no label or legal bindings. “I think it’s cool to be fused [with] a machine and I like the idea of open sourcing all art and killing copyright,” she added.

[…]

Source: Grimes invites AI artists to use her voice, promising 50 percent royalty split | Engadget

A very practical approach to something that is coming anyway

MusicLM generates music from text descriptions – pretty awesome

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We introduce MusicLM, a model generating high-fidelity music from text descriptions such as “a calming violin melody backed by a distorted guitar riff”. MusicLM casts the process of conditional music generation as a hierarchical sequence-to-sequence modeling task, and it generates music at 24 kHz that remains consistent over several minutes. Our experiments show that MusicLM outperforms previous systems both in audio quality and adherence to the text description. Moreover, we demonstrate that MusicLM can be conditioned on both text and a melody in that it can transform whistled and hummed melodies according to the style described in a text caption. To support future research, we publicly release MusicCaps, a dataset composed of 5.5k music-text pairs, with rich text descriptions provided by human experts.

Source: MusicLM

These Two Mictic Bluetooth Bracelets Put an Entire Orchestra of Virtual Instruments in Your Hands (IOS only :'( )

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[…]

the Mictic One are two Bkuetooth bracelets equipped with movement sensors. The bracelets connect to a mobile device (only iOS at the moment, but the Android version is under development). From the Mictic application, we can select different musical instruments and control the sound they produce by moving our hands and arms. Think of an Air Guitar on steroids and you’ll get an idea of ​​how they work. This video helps too.

The fact is that to say that the Mictic One is an Air Guitar simulator is an understatement, because the application of this startup created in Zurich does much more than that. To begin with, the range of musical instruments that we can imitate is quite wide and ranges from the cello to percussion or a DJ’s mixing desk. Each instrument requires you to make different movements with your arms and hands that mimic (to some extent) the actual movements you would make with that instrument.

The app allows you to add (and control) background tracks, and even mix various instruments and record the results. In fact, up to four pairs of bracelets can be connected in case you want to form an augmented reality band. There are also a handful of actual songs, and the company is already making deals with different record labels to add many more. In fact the device is being sponsored by Moby

[…]

wearing the Mictic One is an experience that is as frustrating as it is exciting. It’s frustrating because getting something out that sounds good is harder than it looks. It is not enough to wave your arms like a crazed ape. You have to move with precision and smoothness. Luckily, each instrument has a video tutorial in which we can learn the basic movements. It’s exciting because when you learn to make them sound the feeling is extremely satisfying.

Soon we will be able to offer you an in-depth review of the device, but the first impression is that they are incredibly fun. The Mictic One (sold as a pair and with a double USB-C cable to charge them both at the same time) are already on sale from the company’s website at a price of 139 Swiss francs (about 135 euros). In the future, the company plans to extend the platform so that it can be used with other devices that do not have the necessary motion sensors, such as mobile phones or smart watches.

Source: These Two Bluetooth Bracelets Put an Entire Orchestra of Virtual Instruments in Your Hands

The AI software that could turn you in to a music star

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If you have ever dreamed of earning money from a stellar music career but were concerned you had little talent, don’t let that put you off – a man called Alex Mitchell might be able to help.

Mr Mitchell is the founder and boss of a website and app called Boomy, which helps its users create their own songs using artificial intelligence (AI) software that does most of the heavy lifting.

You choose from a number of genres, click on “create song”, and the AI will compose one for you in less than 30 seconds. It swiftly picks the track’s key, chords and melody. And from there you can then finesse your song.

A man using the Boomy appImage source, Boomy
Image caption,

The Boomy app can be used on the move

You can do things such as add or strip-out instruments, change the tempo, adjust the volumes, add echoes, make everything sound brighter or softer, and lay down some vocals.

California-based, Boomy, was launched at the end of 2018, and claims its users around the world have now created almost five million songs.

The Boomy website and app even allows people to submit their tracks to be listed on Spotify and other music streaming sites, and to earn money every time they get played.

While Boomy owns the copyright to each recording, and receives the funds in the first instance, the company says it passes on 80% of the streaming royalties to the person who created the song.

Mr Mitchell adds that more than 10,000 of its users have published over 100,000 songs in total on various streaming services.

[…]

But, how good are these Boomy created songs? It has to be said that they do sound very computer generated. You wouldn’t mistake them for a group of people making music using real instruments.

[…]

Mr Mitchell says that what has changed in recent years is that technological advancements in AI have meant song-writing software has become much cheaper.

So much so that Boomy is able to offer its basic membership package for free. Other AI song creator apps, such as Audoir’s SAM, and Melobytes, are also free to use.

[…]

general director of the San Francisco Opera, and it could no longer have “two singers, or even a singer and pianist, in the same room”.

But when he tried running rehearsals with his performers online, “traditional video conference platforms didn’t work”, because of the latency, or delays in the audio and video. They were out of sync.

So, Mr Shilvock turned to a platform called Aloha that has been developed by Swedish music tech start-up Elk. It uses algorithms to reduce latencies.

Elk spokesman, Björn Ehler, claims that while video platforms like Zoom, Skype, and Google Meet have a latency of “probably 500 to 600 milliseconds”, the Swedish firm has got this down to just 20.

Mr Shilvock says that, when working remotely, Aloha has “allowed me to hear a singer breathe again”.

[…]

in Paris, Aurélia Azoulay-Guetta says that, as an amateur classical musician, she “realised how painful it is to just carry, store, and travel with a lot of physical sheet music for rehearsals, and how much time we waste”.

So she and her fellow co-founder “decided to junk our jobs” and launch a start-up called Newzik, which allows music publishers and composers to digitally distribute their sheet music to orchestras. […] her solution replaces the stress of musicians having to turn physical, paper pages with their hands during performance or rehearsal. Instead, they now turn a turn a digital page via a connected pedal.

[…]

Portuguese start-up Faniak.

Founder and chief executive, Nuno Moura Santos, describes its app as “like a Google Drive on steroids”, allowing musicians – who are often freelancers -to more easily do their admin all in one place, “so they can spend more time writing and playing music”.

[…]

 

Source: The AI software that could turn you in to a music star – BBC News

Buma / Stemra goes nuts and wins in NL

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The Dutch version of the RIAA is called BUMA / STEMRA and they hunt down people for their own personal gain in about the same way RIAA does.
They’ve sued a company for allowing their workers to listen to their own ipods. In NL companies apparently need to pay BUMA / STEMRA if they allow their employees to listen to the public radio. How this is possible is beyond me, as the singers are paid by the radio station when the songs are played. It’s got something to do with making the music available publicly, even though an office is not a public setting.
Anyway, even though the music on an ipod is private (or may be an audiobook) and can only be heard by one person and is presumably owned by that person, the court has decided that this falls under the public display of music and that the company should pay.
There is unfortunately no path to the court of appeals, as the company has let the deadline expire.
The country is up in arms about it – no-one can really understand this ruling and many consider it a miscarriage of justice. Now I don’t know the judge, but he must have been 90 years old and never have touched a computer in his life in order to come to conclusions like this.

American Edit

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Someone went and remixed Green Day’s American Idiot and threw in the Doctor Who theme, Bush ranting about evil, hip hop, samples from all over and some other random stuff. Although sounding like a recipe for disaster, this stuff actually works. Fire up your iPod and give this one a shot:

http://www.americanedit.net/