Cameron Carr

Zack Zukowski, CJ Carr

We use a modified SampleRNN architecture to generate music in modern genres such as black metal and math rock. Unlike MIDI and symbolic models, SampleRNN generates raw audio in the time domain. This requirement becomes increasingly important in modern music styles where timbre and space are used compositionally. Long developmental compositions with rapid transitions between sections are possible by increasing the depth of the network beyond the number used for speech datasets. We are delighted by the unique characteristic artifacts of neural synthesis.

CJ Carr, Zack Zukowski

This early example of neural synthesis is a proof-of-concept for how machine learning can drive new types of music software. Creating music can be as simple as specifying a set of music influences on which a model trains. We demonstrate a method for generating albums that imitate bands in experimental music genres previously unrealized by traditional synthesis techniques (e.g. additive, subtractive, FM, granular, concatenative). Raw audio is generated autoregressively in the time-domain using an unconditional SampleRNN. We create six albums this way. Artwork and song titles are also generated using materials from the original artists' back catalog as training data. We try a fully-automated method and a human-curated method. We discuss its potential for machine-assisted production.