Out of random noise, scientists use consumer choice to create musical masterworks
Scientists in the United Kingdom wanted to see how consumers and evolution influence music. So they took random bits of noise and asked people to rate them one to five, bad to good. The best were then mixed with each other and sent back out to be rated. After just a few generations, those random bits of noise had become actual music.
Musical styles have a way of evolving. They change with the times.
But who drives that process? Composers? Musicians?
The answer, says a team of British scientists, is consumers.
The scientists conducted an unusual experiment using what the researchers call a Darwinian Music Machine. It is a computer program designed by evolutionary biologist Armand Leroi of Imperial College London and his colleagues.
The program creates a population of short medleys, each about eight seconds long.
“They’re just random bits of noise,” Leroi said.
Leroi says the program started off with a population of about a hundred such tunes. He and his colleagues then posted those tunes on a website and invited people to rate each tune on a five-point scale, ranging from “I can’t stand it” to “I love it.”
As people rated the music, the program picked the most popular medleys and allowed them to procreate.
“These songs – they get together, they have sex, as it were,” Leroi said. “The code gets mixed up, and then they have baby songs.”
The “baby” songs sound similar to their parents and yet are distinct musical entities.
In the experiment, those babies were then sent back online to be rated by the public. The process continued for generation after generation.
“So you have a system that is directly analogous to natural selection in organisms,” Leroi said. “The population evolves.”
In organisms, natural selection drives evolution. In this case, consumer choice was the selective force. Leroi says the striking thing is how quickly the noise turned into music.
“Even within a couple dozen generations, we found that they were already much more musical,” he said. “By 500 to 600 generations, they were sounding really good.”
Take for example, the cacophonous medley the scientists started with.
Here’s how it sounded after 150 generations.
At 400 generations, it evolved into this.
And here’s the tune after 600 generations of selection and reproduction.
“In effect, we’re evolving music out of noise, but there’s no creator there, there’s no composer,” Leroi said. “It’s just pure market forces there, or pure consumer choice that is doing it.”
So what’s the point of this experiment?
Leroi says people generally think musical styles are determined by composers and musicians. Not so.
“There’s the Beatles and there’s Nirvana,” he said. “It’s all one bunch of musical geniuses handing the baton down to the next set of musical geniuses. But what we forget is that the public are exerting a choice upon this, and that choice itself is a creative force.”
In other words, it’s the public that chooses which songs succeed in the marketplace and go on to influence the next generation of artists.
McGill University neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, author of The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, says the new study offers a compelling illustration of the role consumers play in shaping music.
But he says the experiment doesn’t represent the real world because musicians also shape what the audience finds pleasing.
“In the real world, the composer may just draw a line and say, ‘No, I think this is better, and I’m going to stick with it,’” he said. “‘And maybe people don’t like it now, but maybe they’ll come around.’”
Take, for example, the American rock band the Talking Heads.
“Their first few records didn’t do very well,” Levitin said. “And they didn’t change anything. They just kept doing what they were doing. And suddenly, the whole world comes around to them, and says, ‘Yea, you were right. That’s a good sound. We love it now.’”
So, says Levitin, when it comes to musical evolution, natural selection is important. But you can’t dismiss the role of the creator.
----------------------------------------------------------
"PRI's "The World" is a one-hour, weekday radio news magazine offering a mix of news, features, interviews, and music from around the globe. "The World" is a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. More about The World.
Post your comment