Google may be laser-focused on generative AI lately, like nearly all of its Massive Tech rivals, however that hasn’t stopped the search big from patronizing fairly out-there artwork tasks, true to its experimental roots.
Enter the newest creation from Google’s Artwork & Tradition Lab, Viola the Bird, which makes use of AI to know cello and violin compositions. The work has Viola — an animated fowl that evokes a Sesame Avenue character — “carry out” well-known Beethoven, Vivaldi, Holst and Ravel stringed items as a person strikes their mouse forwards and backwards alongside a digital cello of their internet browser.
David Li, the artist behind Viola, labored with cellists and violinists in addition to music arrangers to develop the AI, which he then utilized to create an audio synthesis engine that generates the sounds of a cello or violin based mostly on a person’s mouse actions.
Viola taking part in music, powered by AI. Picture Credit: Google
“The result’s an interactive music experiment that’s each enjoyable and academic,” Pamela Peter-Agbia, a program supervisor at Google Arts & Tradition, writes in a weblog submit. “Viola the Fowl is an effective way for anybody to find out about string devices and to discover their very own creativity by music.”
Having spent a while with Viola, I can attest to the “enjoyable” half — however wouldn’t go as far as to say the venture is instructional. It doesn’t present sheet music or notes to accompany your “taking part in,” and there aren’t any guardrails to forestall somebody from performing songs wildly off-tempo.
Questionable pedagogy apart, there’s sufficient to maintain even informal classical followers entertained for a minute, like a recording characteristic and a freestyle mode that permits you to jam through Viola, on the viola, till you’ve had your fill.
If you happen to’re bored in the course of the subsequent lunch break — or have younger children to maintain entertained — give Viola a attempt. It’s free. Simply hold your expectations in examine — in contrast to a few of Google’s different AI-powered explorations in music of late, this fowl gained’t precisely blow your thoughts.