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American Pi: AI reimages Don McLean for Pi Day

To celebrate Pi Day, Amadeus Code, an artificial intelligence-powered songwriting assistant, has composed a new song, ‘We Started Singing’, inspired by Don McLean’s 1972 classic, ‘American Pie’.

The song – written entirely by software – is one of 99,750^1,619,558 songs theoretically capable of being composed by Amadeus Code, according to the company, whose AI platform draws inspiration from “centuries of music” to provide songwriters with melodic ideas (but not lyrics).

Pi Day is an annual celebration of the mathematical constant pi (π), approximately equal to 3.14159. It is celebrated on 14 March (3/14, in the American month/day date format).

To create ‘We Started Singing’, Amadeus Code adjusted the beats per minute to 136 (‘American Pie’ is 140 BPM) “to accomodate a half tempo of 68 in sections of the new song”.

“Amadeus Code is currently on a path to creating the richest knowledge base in history”

Note length, one of the other variables, was set to longer than the default value, to produce a less-busy melody, while backing vocals (also computer generated) were created by copying a separate melody created by the app.

“Like how π is an infinitely expanding number,” the company says, “in terms of creating melodies, Amadeus Code is currently on a path to creating the richest knowledge base in history.”

Listen to ‘We Started Singing’ above.

A separate AI, DataRobot, correctly predicted Childish Gambino’s ‘This is America’ as winner of song of the year at the recent Grammy Awards.

 


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