What does it really feel wish to improvise with AI?

George Lewis [Photo: Eileen Barroso]

George Lewis is certainly one of these pioneers, a legendary determine within the discipline of human-computer
interplay in music. Lewis first began exploring the usage of musical machines that might
independently work together with human musicians in 1979, creating into his first AI
experiments in 1984 with Rainbow Household. His iconic breakthrough system, Voyager, was
initially developed in 1985-87 and he continues to develop it to at the present time – it’s one of many two
AI techniques in his new piece for me, Blombos Playground. Voyager is totally completely different
from the kind of AI we’ve all turn into aware of lately. Fairly than machine
studying, the system makes use of a set of musical guidelines for listening and enjoying that Lewis has
programmed, primarily based on his personal years of expertise as an improvising musician (he’s
carried out on trombone with most of the world’s main improvisers because the Nineteen Seventies,
together with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Derek Bailey and Evan Parker). The results of this
strategy is a pc program that appears to have its personal character as an improvisor.
Voyager listens to the human co-performers, and typically follows and accompanies, however
at different instances pushes to the fore, like a human improvisor who senses it is perhaps time for
their ‘solo’. Over the 4 a long time since Lewis first programmed it, he’s improved it with
each new growth in computing, and most of the world’s main performers and
ensembles have carried out with it – from saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, to the Worldwide
Up to date Ensemble (USA), to the SWR Symphony Orchestra (Germany). It’s with
Voyager’s newest developments that I enter the image.

It’s been one of many privileges of getting a profession as a up to date music performer that
I’ve been capable of work with the legends I learnt about as a scholar. As an undergraduate 20
years in the past, I learn articles about Lewis’s AI experiments, and I’ve listened to many
recordings of musicians enjoying with Voyager over time. So it was a profession spotlight
when Lewis stated ‘sure’ to a brand new fee as a part of my Cyborg Soloists music know-how
analysis undertaking. Lewis’s central thought was about pushing Voyager to the following stage by
combining it with the Somax improvising software program created by IRCAM, a famend music
analysis institute in Paris.

Although Voyager and Somax are each varieties of ‘AI’, they work utterly otherwise.
Whereas Voyager makes use of rule-based approaches to improvisation, Somax makes use of machine-
studying on a set of user-provided recordings. In my case, it was skilled on a few

hours of improvisations that I despatched to the IRCAM workforce, who then created an avatar twin, a
musical doppelgänger. This new mixture of the 2 AIs has been coined ‘SoVo’ by
Lewis and his analysis workforce (Damon Holzborn at Columbia College, and Marco Fiorini
and Gérard Assayag at IRCAM).

Blombos Playground places me on the centre of a posh weaving of those two AIs. Every
part gives me with scored materials, drawing on musical gestures from the
improvisations I had despatched the workforce, starting from meditative chorales to jazzy clusters to
quicksilver passagework. On the finish of every part, Lewis gives steering on the numerous
other ways of utilizing this materials to improvise with the AI co-performers. Utilizing a MIDI
keyboard, the sounds I make are as malleable because the AI’s. Generally we’re all utilizing piano
sounds, typically we’re duetting on harpsichord and celeste, and each mixture of
these three sounds. The spatialization of the sounds provides additional layers to this musical
dialog, utilizing a number of audio system to position me and the completely different AIs in several corners
of the room, have us chase one another concerning the room, or spin an AI’s sounds round me.

Though this may appear difficult and technical, in efficiency the duetting between
the human and AI keyboardists feels visceral and quick. There’s a logic to each the
combos of sounds and their motion across the house. The viewers can
typically hear the clear variations between human and AI, and typically they mix
collectively, difficult the listener to tell apart between the true and digital musicians.

However what does it really feel wish to play? For me, it appears like being contained in the minds of those
synthetic improvisors as they work together with one another, and with me. I do know that these
software program techniques can’t suppose, however they appear to have personalities: Somax’s improvising
persona is nearer to mine (because it’s skilled on my recordings), whereas Voyager is sort of a
maverick free jazz improviser who’s snug being each an accompanist and a soloist.
However in addition they play in a approach that’s subtly completely different from human co-performers, and their
‘intelligence’ is unmistakably synthetic and non-human. They don’t perceive my intentions,
and I do know that these techniques can’t intend or perceive something, regardless of seeming to
have musical empathy.

The techniques aren’t made to switch human performers, however to divulge to us new methods
of enthusiastic about improvisation, musical character and musical communication. Actual
musicians are much less virtuosic, and extra fallible, however there’s a pure and deep understanding
and connection when improvising with an actual musician that may by no means be replicated. And
what makes these techniques attention-grabbing will not be the AI know-how itself, however the musical
insights and selections that George Lewis and the Columbia/IRCAM workforce have programmed
into them, utilizing their very own musical expertise and instincts to create these digital co-
performers. What conjures up me about Blombos Playground is that it’s pushed me to new
sorts of virtuosity and made me suppose afresh about my very own approaches to each
efficiency and improvisation. It’s challenged my inventive habits – and this synthetic
musical intelligence has made me a greater musician.

Zubin Kanga 

Zubin Kanga will carry out the world premiere of Blombos Playground by George Lewis on
17 October on the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London.