David Cope is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, scientist, and professor emeritus of music at the University of California, Santa Cruz

University of California, Santa Cruz

The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...

. His primary area of research involves artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 and music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

; he writes programs and algorithms that can analyze existing music and create new compositions in the style of the original input music. In addition to regular music classes, he teaches a summer Workshop in Algorithmic Computer Music that is open to the public as well as a general education course entitled Artificial Intelligence and Music for enrolled UCSC students.

His EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence) software has produced works in the style of over a hundred composers -- ranging from short pieces to full length operas.

As a composer, Cope's own work has encompassed a variety of genres. Most recently, all of his original compositions have been written in collaboration with the computer -- based on an input of his earlier works. He seeks a synergy between composer creativity and computer algorithm as his principal creative direction.

Related quotes

In twenty years of working in artificial intelligence, I have run across nothing more thought-provoking than David Cope's Experiments in Musical Intelligence. What is the essence of musical style, indeed of music itself? Can great new music emerge from the extraction and recombination of patterns in earlier music? Are the deepest of human emotions triggerable by computer patterns of notes?

Despite the fact that Cope's vision of human creativity is radically different from my own, I admire enormously what he has achieved. Indeed, this lovingly written book about a deeply held vision of musical creativity should, I think, earn its place as one of the most significant adventures of the late twentieth century.

Douglas Hofstadter

Douglas Hofstadter

Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...

, author of Gödel, Escher, Bach

If only Beethoven or Chopin could explain their methods as clearly as David Cope. So when Cope's program writes a delightful turn of musical phrase, who is the artist: the composer being emulated, Cope's software, or David Cope himself? Cope offers keen philosophical insights into this question, one that will become increasingly compelling over time. He also provides us with brilliant and unique insights into the intricate structure of humankind's most universal art form.

Raymond Kurzweil

Raymond Kurzweil

Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil is an American author, inventor and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition , text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments...

Books

• Cope, David (1991). Computers and Musical Style. Madison, WI: A-R Editions.
• Cope, David (1996). Experiments in Musical Intelligence. Madison, WI: A-R Editions.
• Cope, David (1997). Techniques of the Contemporary Composer. New York, New York: Schirmer Books. ISBN 0-02-864737-8.
• Cope, David (2000). New Directions in Music, 7th ed. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press. ISBN 1-57766-108-7.
• Cope, David (2000). The Algorithmic Composer. Madison, WI: A-R Editions.
• Cope, David (2001). Virtual Music: Computer Synthesis of Musical Style. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-53261-1.
• Cope, David (2006). Computer Models of Musical Creativity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Cope, David (2008). Hidden Structure: Music Analysis Using Computers. Madison, WI: A-R Editions. ISBN 978-0-89579-640-0.

Articles and chapters

• 1992. "A Computer Model of Music Composition." In Machine Models of Music, Stephan Schwanauer and David Levitt, eds.: MIT Press.
• 1992. "On the Algorithmic Representation of Musical Style." In Musical Intelligence, M. Balaban, K. Ebcioglu, and O. Laske, eds. : AAAI Press.
• 1998. "Signatures and Earmarks: Computer Recognition of Patterns in Music.." In Melodic Similarity, Concepts, Procedures, and Applications. Walter B. Hewlett and Eleanor Selfridge-Field (eds.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Published articles

• 1987. "Experiments in Music Intelligence." In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, San Francisco: Computer Music Assn.
• 1987. "An Expert System for Computer-Assisted Music Composition." Computer Music Journal 11,4 (Winter): 30-46.
• 1988. "Music and LISP." AI Expert 3,3 (March): 26-34.
• 1988. "Music: The Universal Language." In Proceedings of the First Workshop on AI and Music. Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: AAAI: 87-98.
• 1989. "Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI): Non-Linear Linguistic-based Composition." Interface Vol. 18: 117-139.
• 1990. "Pattern Matching as an Engine for the Computer Simulation of Musical Style." In Proceedings of the 1990 ICMC. San Fran Computer Music Assn
• 1991. "Recombinant Music." COMPUTER. (July).
• 1991. "Computer Simulations of Musical Style." Computers in Music Research, The Queens University of Belfast, 7-10 (April): 15-17.
• 1992. "Computer Modeling of Musical Intelligence in Experiments in Musical Intelligence." Computer Music Journal 16,2 (Summer): 69-83.
• 1993. "Virtual Music." Electronic Musician, 9:5 (May): 80-85.
• 1996. "Mimesis du style et de la structure musicale." Symposium on Composition, Modelisation et Ordinateur. IRCAM, Paris: 21-3.
• 1997. "Composer's Underscoring Environment." In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference. San Fran: Computer Music Assn.
• 1997. "The Composer's Underscoring Environment: CUE." Computer Music Journal 21/3 (Fall).
• 1999. "One Approach to Musical Intelligence." Intelligent Systems. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society (14/3, May/June).
• 2000. "Facing the Music: Perspectives on Machine Composed Music." Leonardo Music Journal 9: 79-87.
• 2002. "Computer Analysis and Composition Using Atonal Voice-Leading Techniques." Perspectives of New Music 40/1 (Winter): 121-146.
• 2003. "Computer Analysis of Musical Allusions." Computer Music Journal 27/1: 11-28.
• 2004. " A Musical Learning Algorithm." Computer Music Journal 28/3: 12-27.
• 2006. "The Vivaldi Code" Wired, Issue 14. 9 September 2006

Discography

• 1993. Bach by Design. Centaur Records. CRC 2184
• 1997. Classical Music Composed by Computer. Centaur Records. CRC 2329
• 1997. Virtual Mozart. Centaur Records. CRC 2452
• 1999. Towers. Vienna Modern Masters. VMM 2024
• 2003. Virtual Bach. Centaur Records. CRC 2619

External links

• Arts.UCSC.edu - Faculty: David Cope
• SpectrumPress.com: David Cope
• Recombinant Inc - technology company cofounded by David Cope
• "Triumph of the Cyborg Composer", Ryan Blitstein. Miller-McCune. February 22, 2010.

Listening

• "Musical DNA" segment from NPR Radio Lab program