{"id":40538,"date":"2016-12-09T16:21:33","date_gmt":"2016-12-09T21:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=40538"},"modified":"2016-12-09T16:24:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T21:24:00","slug":"news-university-of-toronto-research-team-trains-computer-to-compose-and-sing-christmas-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2016\/12\/09\/news-university-of-toronto-research-team-trains-computer-to-compose-and-sing-christmas-music\/","title":{"rendered":"THE SCOOP | University Of Toronto Researchers Teach A Computer To Compose And Sing Christmas Music"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-40548\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/12\/robot-ornament.jpg\" alt=\"robot-ornament\" width=\"1020\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/12\/robot-ornament.jpg 1020w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/12\/robot-ornament-300x235.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/12\/robot-ornament-768x602.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1020px) 100vw, 1020px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can hear the music coming from the hall. A\u00a0fairly tale. A Christmas tree,&#8221; a robot voice sings.<\/p>\n<p>Affectionately called &#8220;neural karaoke&#8221;, researchers from the University of Toronto have released the world&#8217;s first Christmas song composed and sung entirely by a computer using the image of a Christmas tree as input data.<\/p>\n<p>The result\u00a0is a bizarre and slightly unsettling jumble of awkward phrases set against a beguiling tune that neither begins nor ends. It just is, in all it&#8217;s\u00a0weirdness, then stops with the most curious line of them all, &#8220;There are lots and lots and lots of flowers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The UofT research team created the neural network computer system to explore new ways that artificial intelligence (AI) can move beyond their use as chatbots, robot control, and automated stock trading.<\/p>\n<p>The song was generated after researchers trained the program using over 100 hours of music found online. Using an image of a Christmas tree as the stimulus, they then set it up to generate the music in steps, choosing a key, melodic profile, meter, harmony, and then adding percussion.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2016\/nov\/29\/its-no-christmas-no-1-but-ai-generated-song-brings-festive-cheer-to-researchers\">Guardian<\/a>, professors Raquel Urtasun and Sanja Fidler from Toronto\u2019s computer science lab said they were interested in how such technology could enhance people&#8217;s lives. They imagined AI channels installed on music streaming services that users could use to create songs about the photos they upload. \u201cIt\u2019s about what can deep learning do these days to make life more fun?\u201d Fidler said.<\/p>\n<p>Here it is in all its creepy weirdness:<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-vimeo\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/192711856\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong><em>#LUDWIGVAN<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Want more updates on Toronto-centric classical music news and review\u00a0before anyone else finds out? F<\/em><em>ollow us on\u00a0<\/em><em><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LudwigVanToronto\/\">Facebook<\/a><\/span>\u00a0or <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LudwigVanToronto\">Twitter<\/a><\/span> for all the latest.<\/em><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the University of Toronto have trained a computer that can compose music and write lyrics based on the content of an image.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":40548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5723,39,61,66],"tags":[6560,6578,3430],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/12\/robot-ornament.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-axQ","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40538"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40538"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40550,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40538\/revisions\/40550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40538"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=40538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}