Edward W's Senior Project Blog

Project Title: Humans vs. AI: Can we tell the difference musically?
BASIS Advisor: Jeffrey Winslow & Christian Martin
Internship Location: Independent Research
Onsite Mentor: Dr. Rita Borden



Project Abstract

With major advances in artificial intelligence, AI generated music is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from original human compositions, posing a threat to the livelihoods of composers across all genres of music. This project aims to answer three main questions: 1) Does increased knowledge of music theory facilitate the identification of AI music? 2) Can people tell the difference between AI music and manmade music? 3) Does AI music evoke weaker emotional responses in people compared to original compositions? I will be using ten sets of music from human composers from specific genres, paired with a composition of my own, and a composition of artificial intelligence, and participants will be asked to identify each composition. I will be working with my piano teacher, Dr. Borden, and my choir director, Dr. Martin, to pick out pieces and achieve a better understanding of the musical theory that applies to different genres and eras of music. I will be working with my former computer science teacher Dr. Winslow to use the MuseNet music model to generate pieces of music from specific eras. The following outcomes are expected: 1) Musical knowledge will facilitate the correct identification of AI music. 2) People will not be able to distinguish AI music from original compositions. 3) AI will provoke approximately the same emotional response in its compositions as manmade compositions can.

    My Posts:

  • Concluding Post and Final Thanks

    My original senior project proposal: https://basisseniorprojects.com/flagstaff/files/2024/02/Senior-Project-Proposal-Edward-Wang.pdf My final presentation: https://thejumpingjackal.github.io/senior-project/Senior%20Project%20Final%20Presentation.pdf My final product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEv4j8N0wJ4   Final thoughts This project has shown me a lot about AI and what we can come to expect of it in the coming years. As more and more human experience gets put into crafting and perfecting artificial intelligence, it will... Read More

  • Week 10 (5/8) – Final Thoughts and Results

    This week's goal: Gathering and analyzing the data I collected from my survey. Hello everyone! In this penultimate post, I'll be revealing the answers to my survey and detailing the final results from my survey. But before that, I wanted to take the time to thank everyone who took the survey. I am honestly beyond... Read More

  • Week 9 (5/1) – Playing the Last Half of the AI Piece

    This week's goal: Playing (to the best of my ability) the last half of the AI-composed piece. This week, I spent my time practicing the last half of the AI piece. A lot of the problems from last week were still present in this week (i.e. difficult passagework, technical challenges, etc.), and similarly, I ended... Read More

  • Week 8 (4/24) – Playing the First Half of the AI Piece

    This week's goal: Playing (to the best of my ability) the first half of the AI-composed piece. My survey: https://thejumpingjackal.github.io/senior-project/survey/ Thank you to everyone who has taken the survey so far! I am beyond grateful for all the feedback that has been sent to me and all the help and support I've received from everybody... Read More

  • Week 7 (4/17) – Start Final Product

    This week's goal: Finishing a longer AI generated piece for my final product. My survey: https://thejumpingjackal.github.io/senior-project/survey/ Thank you to everyone who has taken the survey so far! If you haven't taken the survey yet, do it, do it, do it! Allegro Music Transformer and Long Compositions This week, I was spending my time using Allegro... Read More

  • Week 6 (4/10) – Final Survey

    This week's goal: Finishing my survey and sending it out. The survey is finally here! 120 hours of work over 6 weeks, countless sleepless nights, and enough caffeine to take out a large elephant have finally culminated in my long-awaited survey. Although it's a week late, I think I am really happy with the final... Read More

  • Week 5 (4/3) – Major Setback

    This week's original goal: Build up my final survey and opening it to respondents. So, where's the survey? I had originally planned to get my final survey up and running by tomorrow (April 5th), but as of now, I don't think it's feasible. It has been a big hassle trying to figure out how to... Read More

  • Week 4 (3/27) – Converting All The Music

    This week's goal: Convert all of the music I plan to use for my survey into the same sound font. Apologies for how late my blog post was this week! I greatly underestimated the amount of time I'd need to transcribe all my pieces, so this blog post is much later than I would have... Read More

  • Week 3 (3/20) – Composing My Own Music

    This week's goal: Compose all of my own music that I plan to use in the survey. Hey, everybody! If you weren't already aware, I took off last week for spring break, so in one of the upcoming weeks, I'll try to squeeze in two posts instead of one, but I'll still treat each one... Read More

  • Week 2 (3/6) – Generating AI Music

    This week's goal: Generate the AI music that I am going to use in the survey. Allegro Music Transformer: How does it work? If you read my last post, you'll know that I had to pivot to Allegro Music Transformer since MuseNet is on an indefinite hiatus. Luckily, Allegro Music Transformer wasn't terribly difficult to... Read More

  • Week 1 (2/28) – Picking Out Pieces

    This week's goal: Pick out all of the pieces that I plan to use in the resulting survey. A few setbacks first... So... it turns out that the MuseNet neural network I was planning to use for my senior project is on hiatus indefinitely, and there is no official MuseNet neural network that has been... Read More

  • Week 0 (2/21) – Humans vs. AI: Can we tell the difference musically?

    Hello everyone! My name is Edward, and for the next ten weeks, I will be focusing my senior project on a main question: Can people tell the difference between original and AI-generated compositions musically? Before I get into that, a little bit about me. For most of my life, I have been involved in music,... Read More