Half-Baked Ideas: I tried to use AI to “write” a tuba sonata…
Image graciously provided (err…created) by Pixlr’s AI Image Generator.
Personal Note: Do you ever have ideas that seem brilliant one moment, then terrible the next? I do! In honor of this, I decided to create a new series called “Half-Baked Ideas: My Explorations in Music.” Being creative is hard! Great ideas often take time: time to explore, time to experiment and time to revise. And at the end of the day, some ideas are just…bad. So, I’m sharing this series with you as an ode to new ideas in their infancy and to share my own personal journey – perhaps there is some merit, or perhaps just a laugh. Either way, enjoy my fumbles and explorations and may they provide some inspiration of your own!
Several weeks ago, I was in a rehearsal with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra rehearsing Sergei Prokofiev’s Suite from Romeo and Juliet. As a tubist, I just can’t get enough Prokofiev. His writing for our instrument is incredible: he seems to know just how to position us between the low strings and brass and always seems to intuitively find the “sweet spot” in our sound – that register and dynamic that has the ability to change the color of the orchestra with a single entrance. One of the most gratifying parts about being a tubist is being able to make others sound good, and Prokofiev’s writing does exactly this.
Which is why I thought to myself in that moment, “I wish Prokofiev would’ve written a tuba sonata!” I even leaned over to my bass trombone colleague and said as much.
“What if someone arranged Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony as a tuba sonata?” I mused. “How cool would that be!”
“You should do it,” he replied. I laughed. Surely, there could be no better way to dishonor Prokofiev’s name than that. But as rehearsal continued, I thought – why not?
Now, there are many good reasons why not. The saying “hindsight is 20/20” was made for these types of situations. While I’ve experimented casually with arrangements and transcriptions, there is no way I possess the creativity, clarity of mind and understanding of composition to do this idea justice. But again, hindsight…
So, I went perusing the annals of the internet to see if some equally enthusiastic individual had ever made a piano reduction of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony. Maybe I could start there. Sure enough…Reddit to the rescue! For any curious folks, check out u/kuhudam’s intrepid arrangement of the first and second movements here. It’s quite good and faithful to the score.
Pretty quickly, however, I was lost (and busy…or is it distracted?). My doctoral dissertation was a transcription project of two well-known works of J.S. Bach (Goldberg Variations and the “Chaconne” from Bach’s Second Partita for Solo Violin) and, while you would think there would be at least some skills that would translate, I was fresh out of ideas. For this transcription, I couldn’t imagine sacrificing anything in terms of length (Prokofiev’s symphony clocks in at just over 40 minutes), form or color – but also couldn’t quite imagine a 40 minute-long tuba sonata that would do justice to the work. As the Hippocratic Oath states (or rather, doesn’t): first, do no harm.
With that, I decided to file the idea away as a “not now, but maybe someday” sort of endeavor. I like these sorts of ideas because sometimes they lead somewhere and other times…they don’t. But the fun is still in the exploration — at least to me. This is something I’m actively trying to spend more time doing these days: exploring ideas, music, projects and the like. Somehow, I have to think that the exploration will make me a better teacher and tuba player. Somehow.
By now, you’re probably thinking “where’s the AI?” This is where the idea gets very half-baked.
Around this time, I was at a lunch meeting and the topic of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and music was brought up. As this person was extolling the virtues of artificial intelligence within our field, I was intrigued by the idea of AI and tuba music. Surely, I could find a way to join this conversation (metaphorically, and literally) …
That’s when “brilliance” (air quotes necessary) struck. What if I used AI to “write” a tuba sonata inspired by Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony?
With that, let me offer the following disclaimer (though it will no doubt be obvious): I know nothing about AI. Nothing. I struggle with Instagram. So, this was clearly (post-haste) a bad idea.
Nonetheless, I persisted — at least for awhile. My general idea looked like this: AI composes a piece for tuba and piano based on the input of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony (just the first movement, for now). The idea was inspired by some very rudimentary Google searches, which suggested that AI has been used previously in a similar fashion – albeit by much smarter people which a much deeper understanding of AI.
As I said before (and you are probably well aware), this isn’t a new idea and has been done in many iterations before — and by many who are far more qualified than I. Splashy projects fusing AI and classical music are numerous, notably including the “completion” of Beethoven’s 10th Symphony and Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony (No.8). In fact, there’s even an entire Spotify playlist devoted to a very similar version of my idea (albeit no tubas are involved):
In general, I’m a fairly low-tech person and this whole endeavor to learn even a little bit about the topic of AI has been both fascinating and frustrating. My limited experiences with AI began with Midjourney, an AI art generator that turns written prompts into original images. Back in September 2022, there was a fascinating article in the New York Times which touted “AI-Generated Art Won a Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy.” The article encapsulates much of the sentiment and questions surrounding the burgeoning field: Is it cheating? Is it art? Is it any good?
So, armed with almost no skills, but earnest enthusiasm, I set out to find an AI tool that would roughly help me accomplish my goal of “composing” a tuba sonata based on Prokofiev’s work. As a beginner, I needed something inherently user-friendly, so I settled upon Aiva, an “artificial intelligence tool that has been trained in the art of music composition by reading more than 30,000 of history’s greatest scores.” (citation) I stumbled across the video link in the citation through an article entitled “How Does AI Hear?” which provided a good introduction for me into the world of AI music composition. In it, author Rolf Grossman notes that “…in fact, AI doesn’t listen at all, but reads.” This is logical, but proved to nonetheless be interesting to me as I explored the differences between AI-generated compositions (which you’ll hear below) and my personal expectations for the project.
With Aiva, what was most intriguing was the ability to upload “influences,” from which the program could generate compositions. This means one could upload portions of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony as “influences,” and Aiva would generate compositions based on this material, using additional guidelines (style, length, etc.) provided by the user. It looks something like this:
For a novice, it’s at least reasonably intuitive. Input Prokofiev, choose an emoji (“emotion”), ensemble, duration and number of compositions and…voilà! Here’s an example:
It’s interesting, but one would hardly describe it as “good music.” The more I experimented, the more I discovered challenges and the importance of human editing to these tracks. Another obstacle was translating Prokofiev’s densely-orchestrated scores into something that could be parsed down into a piece for tuba and piano. My solution — for now, at least — was to revise the instrumentation and edit the individual layers accordingly. It’s not ideal and a bit clunky, but it’s a start. Here’s the next version:
Logically the next challenge is: where do I go from here? To be honest, I’m not certain. Aiva will generate further sections of the composition, but — to be honest — they’ve all be fairly terrible. If one were to really commit to this idea, I think it would take much further expansion both within and outside Aiva. For anyone interested, I found this to be a very interesting and logical approach to the craft. As an added bonus, the instructor’s style simply cannot be beat.
But all in all, I’m not sure this a direction I want to head. Here’s a few observations I found interesting — perhaps you may agree or disagree, or have a totally different experience — all of which I’d be curious to hear.
1) Crafting a strong melody is challenging. For every composition generated, I found the melody to be the weakest and least imaginative part. Even after varying the “influences” I gave it, the melody the never seemed to have an originality or intrigue.
2) Music (at least for me) is an aural endeavor first, as opposed to a visual one. This was brought up in one of the articles linked above, but I discovered that AI generates compositions largely based on visual prompts as opposed to aural cues, which may also contribute to that slightly awkward or clunky feel. I often tell my students to “play music with your ears first, then your eyes,” and I think this is a similar sentiment.
3) One aspect of this project that I really appreciated was learning to listen to a composition in separate “layers.” This really drove home the point of how voices, timbres, registers and dynamics interacted with one another, and is something that I can see transferring well to explorations in new music, chamber music, orchestral repertoire and beyond.
4) Despite my poor results, I think this technology (and those similar) has great potential — but only when harnessed and molded/guided through human input. It’s a good “jumping off” point and maybe, at the hands of someone more thoughtful and skilled than I, this project could be interesting — but at the end of the day, is it any better than a composer trying their hand at this idea without the help of AI?
5) I am not the person to do this project — at least in this iteration. One of the goals of this blog is to help me refine my identity as a musician and sometimes there's benefit in discovering what you’re not. By exploring these ideas, I’m starting to see the gaps in knowledge that would be required to undertake a project of this scope in a musically meaningful way — a deeper understanding of AI and computer languages, for one. But I also really enjoy the collaborative process within music and, in this iteration, it’s something that feels missing — at least for me.
6) These explorations have reminded me of a phrase I heard frequently in my graduate work: “We are only as good as the music we play.” The longer I teach and perform, the more I agree with that sentiment — but also, it seems to get harder and harder to explain what, exactly, is “good music.” This alone is another post in its entirety.
Ultimately, I think this is one idea I’ll file away into the “maybe later…but probably not” column. As I said in the beginning, great ideas take time and revision and — at the end of the day — sometimes they’re still just…okay. But what can be learned from this endeavor — at least for me — is the value of experimentation, learning something about an area in which you know absolutely nothing, trying to push yourself outside of your comfort zone and maybe having a laugh along the way. That in itself — poor compositions and all — makes this a worthwhile endeavor.
Thanks for listening! I’ve included a few of the “lesser” takes and some compositions which…might have “potential” for your amusement below…