Can the early 70s prog sound be cloned nowadays?

 

Very educational and a very interesting viewpoint.

The point I wanted to make was that it didn't matter if we cloned or not ... we're too silly to know the difference and appreciate anything anyway, without the commercial bruhaha, or the PA bruhaha .... which is just like saying that we will never know, understand or even appreciate anything that clones anything because it is automatically "cold" and a "machine", and sex is not likely to be fun unlike some of the sci-fi books have told us!  And Dean will add the professorial notes to the article!

The recent biopic of Alan Turing is called "The Imitation Game", its title comes from a game where players have to decide the gender of a human respondent by a series of written questions, this he later developed into the Turing Test for machine intelligence, or more accurately the perception of machine intelligence, since the machines involved were imitating human intelligence rather than achieving intelligence. The key difference between the Turing Test and 'Emily Howell' is the interaction between the human interrogator and computer respondent. 'Emily Howell' does not respond to audience interrogation, it is merely imitating a human composer and the audience is passive in this scenario.

I haven't read it, but bearing in mind that it was written by Emily's creator David Cope, then any assessment or conclusion he draws regarding "its" creativity and style is inherently biased, as is any assessment we can draw from reading it. This bias also appears in the published works that the program has produced since Cope has selected pieces for general release and in doing so he is part of the creative process that he created. 

[Unlike infinite monkeys producing the entire works of Shakespeare where one wrong word in a monologue results in failure of the entire piece ("To be or not too be"), a 'wrong note' is not only acceptable, it is, from a pseudo-creativity perspective, desirable.]

The program-suite began as a style-imitator, and that is what it still does, albeit in imitation of a style that can be called "her" own that has resulted from the development process. That development process is wholly human since the 'Emily' program suite can only create musical notes, it cannot create algorithms or write computer code. The program suite has been created to compose classical music, it cannot create a pop song because the rules for a pop song have not been coded into the algorithms. 

I can use dice to create music. The roll of a die can be used to select a note, another to select note-length and thus a sequence of notes can be created, and since those dice rolls are random it will sound random and musically unsatisfactory. To make it sound more musical I can apply rules to each roll that are determined by the previous roll or rolls, for example I can limit the palette of notes to a particular musical scale and then determine which of those to pick based upon the preceding note using very simple rules of harmony and rhythm. Now the creation of note-sequences appears to be analytical because it is no longer purely random, yet no actual analysis is involved, it is still a sequential process of placing one note after another. The more rules I apply the more a distinct style will develop, but that style is decided by the rules I create, not by the random sequence of dice rolls. I have automated the creation process but not the creativity process. The more rules that come into play the less random and automaton the piece becomes, but it is still a pseudo-organic mimicry, and these rules are not unique to this algorithm, they are the same rule-sets that any human composer would employ when composing, even when improvising. [We've discussed improvisation several times before and although some people will claim some instinctive, metaphysical or mystical processes are involved during free-form improv., rules are still being applied, albeit instinctively or subconsciously. Improv. is not created without knowledge and experience of music and playing an instrument.]

In other words, she's a "clone" ... but not one that will be given any attention any time soon!