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Musical evolution with the help of a computer

01.07.2012

The music of geniuses always captures, amazes and touches the most delicate spiritual strings. And it's still evolving. But does the consumer of music have anything to do with the creation of musical traditions, and if so, what? A PC program helped British biologists from Imperial College London answer this question.

Scientists treated the issue biologically, suggesting that the influence of music consumers on its motives is evolutionary, according to the laws of Darwinian natural selection. And in order to confirm or refute the hypothesis, it was necessary to approach the creation of music, excluding from this process the participation of composers and the creative act in general.

To this end, the researchers created the DarwinTunes computer program, which first synthesized one hundred random music tracks of 8 seconds each, consisting of randomly selected tones, knocks, etc., which were almost white noise, but had the same rhythm. The researchers then asked volunteers—college students and visitors to the DarwinTunes website—to rate these tracks on a XNUMX-point like-dislike scale. Then they started the process of "sexual reproduction" - from the ten most popular tracks they made twenty new pairs, they replaced the "parents" and the ten most unpopular tracks, thus creating a new generation. To complete the picture, "mutations" were introduced into the child tracks - random changes in tones.

When this musical evolution had advanced far enough, the participants in the experiment were asked to rate 20 randomly selected tracks from different generations. As a result, it turned out that the tracks from the latest generations scored the most points, thus confirming that the "music of the crowd" is indeed evolving towards greater musicality.

To date, musical evolution according to Darwin has survived more than three thousand generations, more than seven thousand site visitors participate in the evaluation of tracks, and it seems that the process is coming to an end - the curve of "musicality" (that is, pleasantness to the ear) of generations is saturating, and new generations little different from the previous ones. According to the authors of this unusual experiment, its main result is that not only composers, but also listeners participate in the creation of musical traditions. When creating their works, composers wittingly or unwittingly take into account the music that their audience is used to.

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