An impressive achievement indeed. That's exactly what one'd expect from LLM.
If someone wants to see/hear what real music is, listen to this, just to get a reference point. This will make you cry. Literally.
For anyone else tempted to give in to their baser instincts, don't waste your time on the links, it's two very short piano performances. They're good, but it's statistically extremely unlikely that you will shed even a single tear.
I am generally in favour of throwing shade on LLM "creativity", at least thus far, but this is an uncomfortably strained flex. Literally.
I think the "literally cry" thing is a zoomer thing. I watch a lot of YouTube music video channels and the "this made me cry" thing is a meme that shows up with extreme frequency. I don't think we should take it any more seriously than we do "laugh out loud" when the actual response is usually more like a quick exhale.
Please listen to the above pieces once a day (it will take only 4 minutes) for 10 days. Then, while speaking about music, you will sound pretensious to your friends. Please try.
(I can send more. This will include jazz certainly. And Beatles... and others. You have to put some effort into it, it will pay off).
I've been studying music for 10 years, I'm not some 12 year old who's only ever heard pop.
Classical music isn't special superior form of art, and people who try to paint it as such tend to be elitists who want to have something to hold over other people to make them feel superior. Kind of like how people latch on to wine to try and seem sophisticated (ironically, wine snobbery has its origin with kings and chieftains of conquered territories trying to fit in with their Roman oppressors, but at least they were cognizant of why they were doing it, unlike modern wine snobs). There's plenty of metal that's far more technical and complex than typical classical music, but you don't see metalheads going around telling people to listen to "real" music.
What's special about classical music is merely that it's a literate form of music. It has an underlying "text" (the score) that everyone agrees on, which represents a somewhat abstracted 'blueprint' of the overall work to be performed. A metal piece doesn't really have that: you can transcribe it after the fact to score notation or tablature, but the result is merely one listener's opinion of how that piece "goes". Jazz music has its "lead sheets" but these are intentionally simplified and/or otherwise changed wrt. the source material taken from the "Great American Songbook" rep (which is far closer to the classical tradition than any kind of modern "pop").
This means that classical music, more than other traditions, is a natural target for both broader academic study as well as automated generation by AI's trained on some sort of existing repertoire.
I didn't study classical, but I was watching some YouTube channel by someone with graduate degree in classical. He offhand mentioned that many of the "compositions" of guys like Chopin were actually improvisations that were later transcribed. I've heard similar tales of Bach, especially his ability to improvise complex fugues on the spot as a sort of party trick.
I just mean to say, I don't think there is a clear divide between a classical mentality for composition and a modern mentality. It is just we study classical hundreds of years after the fact and that academization of the music has lent a particular view to it. If we study metal in a hundred years the same way we study classical (or jazz) it may seem just as rigid.
You're right that improvisation was historically very relevant in classical music and that this tradition was mostly lost starting somewhere in the mid-to-late 19th century as the view on how pieces should be performed became a lot more rigid. It still survives in places, such as among organists, and there are many attempts to revive it. But the fact that it is a matter of academic scholarship and study is not that closely related: there are lots of period-contemporary treatises and 'method' books that discuss exactly how pieces should be improvised and/or performed, often in great detail and depth. You can't possibly have that unless people are very much familiar with the practice of writing their music down on paper. That's what 'literate' means basically, it really is as simple as that. It's also something that other music traditions tend to not focus on to anything near the same extent.
I’m not sure how useful that framing is because improvisation is effectively composition in real time. By writing down an impromptu or something that was played on the spot it becomes composition when it’s crystallized in this way.
Chopin predates audio recording, so it’s not as if someone recorded his performance and then transcribed it like people do today with jazz solos. I’m assuming that Chopin was the one to transcribe and publish after he had a good idea because few would have the recall to do so accurately.
Sometimes compositions are generated spontaneously by the composer (one pass) and sometimes they require extensive labor and refinement.
It’s not to say that classical music doesn’t also include improvisation, and I agree that there’s not a clear divide between classical mentality and modern sensibilties. Although today, the composition (if not scored) ends up taking it’s final form as an audio recording. More and more the composition exists untranscribed in the DAW session.
> Have you _met_ a metalhead? :) saying that as one myself (less now, used to play in bands and stuff), this is one of the snobbiest group music-wise!
Like when we were 15, yeah sure, everything sucked, Opeth rules, Mayhem is tru Black Metal! etc. Though later on only my really immature friends kept those opinions. But I think this goes for any niche subculture that people use to define themselves. I too am an old metalhead, still practicing! Dress like a 15 year old, crank the volume and bang your fucking head!!! \m/(>.<)\m/ ;-)
I see metalheads casting shade on subgenres of metal they're not into and overhyped bands moreso than entire other genres of music. I remember a lot of conversations about how Cradle of Filth was poseur black metal for high school kids back in the day, for example.
I am generally in favour of throwing shade on LLM "creativity", at least thus far, but this is an uncomfortably strained flex. Literally.