Book Image

Hands-On Music Generation with Magenta

By : Alexandre DuBreuil
Book Image

Hands-On Music Generation with Magenta

By: Alexandre DuBreuil

Overview of this book

The importance of machine learning (ML) in art is growing at a rapid pace due to recent advancements in the field, and Magenta is at the forefront of this innovation. With this book, you’ll follow a hands-on approach to using ML models for music generation, learning how to integrate them into an existing music production workflow. Complete with practical examples and explanations of the theoretical background required to understand the underlying technologies, this book is the perfect starting point to begin exploring music generation. The book will help you learn how to use the models in Magenta for generating percussion sequences, monophonic and polyphonic melodies in MIDI, and instrument sounds in raw audio. Through practical examples and in-depth explanations, you’ll understand ML models such as RNNs, VAEs, and GANs. Using this knowledge, you’ll create and train your own models for advanced music generation use cases, along with preparing new datasets. Finally, you’ll get to grips with integrating Magenta with other technologies, such as digital audio workstations (DAWs), and using Magenta.js to distribute music generation apps in the browser. By the end of this book, you'll be well-versed with Magenta and have developed the skills you need to use ML models for music generation in your own style.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction to Artwork Generation
3
Section 2: Music Generation with Machine Learning
8
Section 3: Training, Learning, and Generating a Specific Style
11
Section 4: Making Your Models Interact with Other Applications

Summary

This chapter is important because it introduces the basic concepts of music generation with machine learning, all of which we'll build upon throughout this book.

In this chapter, we learned what generative music is and that its origins predate even the advent of computers. By looking at specific examples, we saw different types of generative music: random, algorithmic, and stochastic.

We also learned how machine learning is rapidly transforming how we generate music. By introducing music representation and various processes, we learned about MIDI, waveforms, and spectrograms, as well as various neural network architectures we'll get to look at throughout this book.

Finally, we saw an overview of what we can do with Magenta in terms of generating and processing image, audio, and score. By doing that, we introduced the primary models we'll be using throughout...