Look, Hofstadter is an amateur. He is obviously a music lover, but he's not a music expert by any stretch. This was plainly obvious when he came to my university and gave his little talk.
He assumed that because his talk was at the music school's concert hall, his audience must be comprised of music students and faculty, without actually ever checking if that were the case. Those of us from the music school in the audience were all very aware that the majority of the audience were students from mathematics, physics, computer science, etc. Most music students don't know who Hofstadter is, and don't care.
So when he jumps to his conclusion that he "fooled" 1/3 of the audience with his recording, it's way way off base. After the talk, we all (music faculty & grad students) went out for a drink with Hofstadter and pointed out the errors in his assumptions, but he refused to listen. His methodology is totally bent, and his conclusions are what he wants to think, not the actual data.
I --and all my fellow musicians-- were pretty much all totally nonplussed by his demonstrations, and underwhelmed indeed by the supposed "quality" of the computer compositions. Don't get me wrong, it's impressive that a computer can do what EMI can do. But it ain't Bach, and it sure ain't Chopin.
Also, do not underestimate the human intereference in the process. A human is involved in "tweaking" EMI and "filtering" its output. EMI probably produces 1000 pieces per minute, 999 of which are total crap, and one of which is vaguely interesting. Run it for a few minutes and you'll have a few vaguely interesting pieces. Pick the best one, and say "the computer composed this, isn't it great?". What about the other N-thousand pieces that were shite?
Edit: (It was to long) I think the program is fairly close to the human creative process. While it probably produces a lot of junk so do we. I would consider it a success when presented with a few good ideas out of the countless possibilities. Saying it lacks good taste is different than saying it's not creative.
Thanks for the up-vote. My point is that it's easy to fool an amateur. But classical music, which is what Hofstadter thinks he understands/knows, is often beyond the realm of the amateur. It's not that an amateur can't love classical music, but to understand why a piece of music is great when another similar one isn't is often a rather complicated question.
I think my point would be illustrated by this experiment, similar to his original experiment. Take a piece by Chopin, and a piece by a contemporaneous unknown composer. No doubt to the amateur, they would sound like they could have been written by the same person. Add in the piece by EMI and an amateur would not be able to tell which one was which. The reality is that in order to really understand great music, you need to know a lot more than Hofstadter does. I am confident that I could play him 10 pieces written in Poland in 1835 and he would think they were all by Chopin, even if all of them were utter crap.
Human musicians and composers can riff off a single rhythm or melody and produce something wonderful the very first time. Engineers can visualize a solution, implement it, and have it basically work, with only surface elements changing. Artists can have a vision of what they want to achieve in their minds and cast it out, bit by bit, ever remaining the work they intended it. Sure, each incorporate many patterns already learned and practiced and processed. But computers are a long, long way from even doing that. This is a very different type of creativity.
He assumed that because his talk was at the music school's concert hall, his audience must be comprised of music students and faculty, without actually ever checking if that were the case. Those of us from the music school in the audience were all very aware that the majority of the audience were students from mathematics, physics, computer science, etc. Most music students don't know who Hofstadter is, and don't care.
So when he jumps to his conclusion that he "fooled" 1/3 of the audience with his recording, it's way way off base. After the talk, we all (music faculty & grad students) went out for a drink with Hofstadter and pointed out the errors in his assumptions, but he refused to listen. His methodology is totally bent, and his conclusions are what he wants to think, not the actual data.
I --and all my fellow musicians-- were pretty much all totally nonplussed by his demonstrations, and underwhelmed indeed by the supposed "quality" of the computer compositions. Don't get me wrong, it's impressive that a computer can do what EMI can do. But it ain't Bach, and it sure ain't Chopin.
Also, do not underestimate the human intereference in the process. A human is involved in "tweaking" EMI and "filtering" its output. EMI probably produces 1000 pieces per minute, 999 of which are total crap, and one of which is vaguely interesting. Run it for a few minutes and you'll have a few vaguely interesting pieces. Pick the best one, and say "the computer composed this, isn't it great?". What about the other N-thousand pieces that were shite?