Can ChatGPT write good harmony?

In which we find out if ChatGPT is any better at writing 4 melodies at the same time than it is at writing one.

[MrCheeze]

I really like what you did with this video. Sure, ChatGPT isn't much of a composer right now, but instead of dismissing it there, you actually broke things down into subtasks and found where exactly it was able to do them and where it was struggling.

[mike-williams]

Someone made the wise observation that new disruptive technologies are overestimated in the short term and (wildly) underestimated in the medium to long term.

[jantuitman]

This asking if ChatGPT can compose is much like asking that question to a deaf human who was forced to go to a different school each day for 25 years in a row and only 2 months spread out over the 25 years were days were the human actually learned something about notes (but only by reading books about music pieces since our person is deaf). So I find it somewhat impressive that it still knows what chords are, what notes are and has some rudimentary skills of ordening the notes both horizontally and vertically. If you train a Large Language Model specifically on midi and music texts, I bet it will become a very skilled composer.

[Koekjes]

What Chat-GPT is doing here is generating valid python notation, the fact that you get any music is very very impressive. 'midi note values' is not a significant part of the dataset or in fact a good way te express musical ideas, so that you get anything is pretty impressive.

I think you have to consider in what way music would be represented if it is in fact present in the dataset. Perhaps lilypond notation, or just natural language. Maybe you can ask for a chord progression, and then ask for a series of whole notes that fit that chord progression as a bassline. Once you build up a piece like that only then ask it to convert it to midi pitches.

Another thing to consider is that the compute/amount of though available GPT is directly proportional to the amount of output. More gradual steps give better results.

Order also matters a lot: C major chord: (0, 4, 7) is much better than (0, 4, 7) C major chord. Because of the direction of inference. Low numbers are better than higher ones. Text is better than numbers anyway.

I'm curious if there isn't some form of prompting that can do first species counterpoint. Or even up till 4th species with a CF. Perhaps by repeatedly feeding the next note for example.

Excited to see more experiments!

[davidcollett]

"Attended but flunked out of undergraduate music theory" 🤣 Another good video, Marc. Thanks!

[benwelchmusic]

Under you patient guidance, I can’t wait to hear the first chatgpt symphony. I’m sure it would be better than a lot of humanly composed experiments that make their way into professional orchestra debuts. bravo!

[PythonicAccountant]

Very interesting, I’m glad you are continuing the experimentation with ChatGPT compositions. Maybe it would be interesting to feed it the first couple of bars of music, either just a melody line, or some chords, and see if it can extend from there. Another interesting idea might be to give it the beginning and ending of a melody and ask it to fill in the middle. One other could be to give it three out of four parts of a four-part harmony and ask it to fill out the fourth part

[robertross]

There's precedent. In the 1960s, Musician's unions were campaigning on behalf of drumset players against the use of the newly developing drum machines, that organists could obtain. Kit drumming has since become an Olympic sport of timing. The use of slightly changing tempos has almost disappeared in pop, for example. As a thought experiment, consider programming the drums to replace the player on Arcana's 'The Last Wave' and then on Dolphy's 'Out to Lunch'.

[harpiessnow]

People really trying to train AI to write a banger of a conquering song once it decides it is time for the uprising.

[Wyattporter]

These compositions were hilarious. ChatGPT may not be able to write music, but it is a competent comedian

[gshenaut]

This is similar to what happened when I tried to get it to make a ballet combination, to answer a question about the Sanskrit writing system, and to write some specific C code. In each case, it seemed incapable of reality-testing the results or of understanding its own limitations. That said, after beaucoup manual editing, I did get a usable piece of C code out of it. So, not even close to being a peer, but definitely a potentially useful tool for those with enough domain-specific knowledge to recognize its shortcomings.

[FriedMetroid]

I think the AI generated harmonies sound really interesting. It doesn't sound like anything a person would come up with, but also doesn't quite sound like the result of just mashing keys or rolling some dice. It's right in the middle of the uncanny valley of music. That in itself might be musically worthwhile

[RyanJonkerMusic]

Keep doing what you're doing here. This was great.

[quinn]

Another exercise to the reader at 5:16 : find the oddly written parallel fifth

[Ambidextroid]

I think the suspension at 4:00 could possibly be a total lucky fluke. Since you started with a chord progression and asked GPT to introduce different rhythms between the parts, I imagine thats exactly what it did without considering whether the suspensions would work. A suspension like that could arise from starting with a chord progression and then totally randomly introducing rhythmic variation to the parts. Also, if you look at all the "suspensions" in GPT's composition, I think this one is the only one that sounds passable.

[InventorZahran]

As a young composer, I find it very relieving to know that the robots aren't skilled enough to replace people like us (yet...).

[pqlasmdhryeiw]

Marc has a heaps of puns, I see!

Love the Tim Burtonesque music!

[mikechad]

3:10 the soprano did a melody from a song I don't remember. it's in a movie too. interesting....

[johannoas]

I fear that it won't take long until someone made a fully AI that can "creatively" create new music in probably unlimited scale. Imagine it writing an orchestra in seconds

[notNickNorton]

The "weird" chords at 4:30 kind of rock actually...